A few days ago, you may have heard about the whole Jimmy Wales / Wikipedia fiasco — its hard to believe that you didn’t as it hit a lot of major mainstream media outlets.  The substance of the fiasco (if such a phrase can make sense in a non-oxymoronical kind of way) to me was not so much that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia may have had an affair, but that he may have used his influence to affect a Wikipedia entry, that of Rachel Marsden, the woman he is thought to have an affair with.  Given that Wikipedia is meant to be the towering triumph of the wisdom of crowds, I think exposing this link is a somewhat worthwhile one, although the affair in and of itself … eh, not so much.

What is also kind of interesting, to me, is how Google News kind of missed the boat on this.

So, I’ve written about Google News a bunch of times before, and most recently about how it might help the digitally disaffected, ironically, in another story about a Wikipedia founder (in this case, Larry Sanger).

Well, I think this case is a perfect case of how, if Google wanted to commit the man power (and perhaps some learned PR tricks), Google News could have really worked.  What do I mean? Well, the “digitally disaffected” or new media orphan here, is Rachel Marsden.  In her retort to Jimmy Wales, she decided to post her personal reply on *Ebay* of all places.

Granted its somewhat appropros given that she planned to sell his stuff (and is going to be making a killing — a t-shirt and sweater that he left at her place are going for around $2k and $1k respectively … and there are still 5 days left of bidding) anyway, I think that her message could have gotten out just as well as a “comment” on Google News.

What do I mean by “man power” on Google’s behalf?  Only that it would have taken an active solicitation (and I mean *active*) to get her “take” on things as a Google News comment — because as I recall its a somewhat onerous task to do, and this aspect of Google News is by no means so popular that people are flocking to it in the first place to release their “statements”.

In fact, there’s no real easy way for people who are part of the news to submit their comments *on* Google News, which is also a bit disappointing (i.e. there is no clear link or clear submission page), but perhaps that’s not really all that surprising.

So is this a missed opinion for Google News? 

I think it is.  If they had recognized who Rachel Marsden was, and recognized that she wanted to release a “digital” statement, then this would have been the perfect opportunity.  Google could have, in turn, released a statement of their own, stating that Rachel Marsden was releasing her own statement in full on Google News, rather than the pithy off the cuff remark made on Ebay.  And as this would have been the only place where this existed (because I don’t know of any other place Rachel Marsden released a comment), it would have resulted in not only Bongo traffic, but more importantly, Bongo recognition that Google News is something important and unique.

But for whatever reason, Google didn’t, and perhaps its more reflective of the inertia of Google’s beta ‘handlers’ than anything else.  It may not be as great as Jesus, but I think Google News has the disruptive potential to upend a great deal of online journalism by giving principals in the story *their* say — its just too bad Google doesn’t believe it as well.