If you’ve not seen the news via Steve Rubel (here), Google has added a comment facility to it’s Google News making it – in Steve’s words – “an editorial product rather than simply an aggregator”.
This leads to Steve’s next question: “can a PR agency comment on a source’s behalf (assuming they represent them) and if so how is our affiliation verified?“
It’s the same question being asked by the fore-father of citizen journalism, Dan Gillmor – only from the other side:
“How will this work? How will Google verify that the people commenting on what’s been written about them are actually the people in question? What kind of data-gathering will this lead to on Google’s part?“
Dan’s argument is that traditional media outlets have missed a very big trick to allow readers to add their voice to news coverage and as a result the ability to do so has been claimed by one online media giant.
What this means for the future of news coverage remains to be seen.
Technorati tags: Google News, Steve Rubel, Dan Gillmor
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