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.

Not that Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia is anything *remotely* like a New Media Orphan (in fact, one could say he is a new media ‘godfather’, in some respects), but interesting rejoinder *by* Mr. Sanger on Google News, with respect to an article written about Citizendium, his new authority-driven Wikipedia off-shoot.

Upshot of this was that Mr. Sanger felt the author got several facts wrong, and proceeds to go on a lengthy rebuttal as to exactly what numbers and facts were, in fact, wrong.

How?

Through Google News’ ability for people who are directly involved *in* a news piece to comment *on* that the news that is published.

Now, several months ago, I ranted and raved about this (not unlike, for example, how others ranted about the Jesus Phone, but I am a media geek, I suppose) — and still today, I stand by my initial irrational exuberance.

The ability for principals *in* a story to comment *on* a story, on a platform that has a gargantuan reach is *important*. It allows people to give their opinion that is unrestricted by the 5 second media byte, and it allows people to make sure that they are quoted correctly, or more importantly to set the record straight — particularly if the author of the story got the “angle” wrong.

And perhaps most importantly, it gives people who would not otherwise have a widely read platform *for* their opinions, to *give* their opinions without censorship — and, perhaps *just* as importantly — have their opinions be front and center.

Without them being drowned out by the multitude of comments by “ordinary people”.

Now, sure, its important that everyone have their say. Blogs are important, right? And sure, many *newspapers* these days have “comments” enabled for every single post. That’s also good.

But if people who are interviewed *in* a story want to comment on the story, they have to include it in with the rest. Most likely it will get buried in the avalanche of comments if its a particularly controversial story. And for the purposes of getting the *message* of the story right — I don’t think that this is as powerful as what Google News is doing.

Sure, they could also let everyone comment — but allowing people who are in the stories to do it first, is a great first step (if they realize it or not). Because those voices don’t get drowned out by the other voices (some of which may be insightful … others not so much).

I mean, let’s imagine Mr. Sanger, for example, if he wasn’t as digitally connected as he was. Google News provides a great platform for such an individual — a new media ‘orphan’, perhaps, someone who doesn’t have a blog, doesn’t have the juice or connections to get their opinion broadcast — to have his or her say, and more importantly, have it heard.

And that, I think, is the genius of Google News “2.0″ … where they are actively allowing people who are *part* of the story *give* their side of the story if they want, without any apparent editorialization whatsoever.

Is that going to “change online news as we know it” forever? Ok — I don’t now. But I think its a damn good first step.

Update: My faith in Techmeme comes through — Techmeme finally gets it right.  Yay! {albeit more than 24h after the original Reuters article was pushed out}

To be honest, Blogrunner seems to have the same “problem”.

But for my money, the death of the HD-DVD format is easily the biggest story in the technosphere. Its something many have wondered about for years, and has implications far and wide for tons of folks — not the least of whom, consumers who have been wondering about competing formats and who have been on the sidelines waiting for a winner; or, the industry, who is cognizant of the fact that as long as their was a “war”, they were on the losing end of it, while folks *did* wait for a winner (and continued/continues to download media with abandon).

Why isn’t it the top story? With all due respect to Nick Carr (who’s post on Amazon’s S3 failure has been sitting at the top all day), a niche storage solution doesn’t trump the end of the high definition wars. Hand waving explanation for all of this? Its because of the “algorithm”, man. I mean, I have no idea what the algorithm actually constitutes (I have my best guesses), but I think its clearly one of those times where an algorithm just ain’t cuttin’ it.

(and also to be fair, at the time of this posting, Megite isn’t getting it right either. Google News, however, does).

So four months after I unbashedly proclaimed that Google News would change the world as we know it (or something like that), the New York Times has done a bit of a pseudo-update on how things have done in the interim.

To say that progress has been “modest” would be a dramatic understatement (cue in Mat Ingram’s — a journalist himself who clearly follows new media as closely as anyone — own observations that he barely noticed that they have existed a few weeks ago), as only 150 comments have been submitted over the life of the “beta” thus far.

Now, I have to say that I’m a little disappointed in this, but I’m not surprised.

Unless there’s some marketing push behind it, I am sure that many people involved *in* media stories will necessarily know that a) Google *News* exists and b) there is in fact the option to put your *additional* comments “on the Google”.

For a company that’s planning to purchase something like a company every few days for the next year, I’m sure Google has enough cash to promote the hell of out this thing. However, I suspect that there’s probably a lack of political will within Google to push for an activity that requires a substantial amount of human capital.

That is, it takes humans to vet the credentials of sources within stories (so that they can comment), and it also takes humans to find those sources in the first place to let them know that Google comments exists, and it also takes humans to actually read the comments to filter — and I’m sure they do this no matter how they deny it, even in a post-hoc way — for appropriateness and so on.

On one hand I’m glad that Google News is getting a bit of a bump through the New York Times. On the other hand, its a bit sad to see that its not quite reaching the potential that it could — because while my initial euphoria has passed, I still think that the potential is still huge, as it really allows sources *of* a story to have their own soapbox.

(because not everyone has a blog)

Earlier this year, when Sam Zell bought the Tribune for around $8 billion dollars, he brought attention to Google News at the time, alluding to how it was ripping of traditional news media — and wondering out loud whether or not new “deals” were going to come about given this peculiar inequity, particularly if Google realized how much traditional news media realized how much it was “stealing” from traditional media.

Now, the refrain from new media watchers and bloggers at the time was “but Google doesn’t actually *make* money from Google News, you blithering idiot.”

And in fact, that kind of refrain continues to be echoed by new media watchers every time there is some kind of evolution in Google News — with the subtext being that Google News doesn’t actually *host* news, it only *links* to news. Hence, it has value in a traffic generator.

Well, it looks like that’s all about to change.

Google News will now be *hosting* and *publishing* news. Not as an original publisher, mind, but republishing agency news, including such as Press Association, Associated Press, Canadian Press and Agence France-Presse. The details, as I understand them, is part of a larger move by Google to eliminate duplicate news, where for a given news headline, there might be dozens of news sites, where all of them might have exactly the same story, because they might all use, for example, the wire story from Associated Press.

Where does this business about “hosting” come about? When the agency story doesn’t actually have an original news site, Google will host it themselves.

This, coupled with Google News Comments, is a big thing.

(Is it “Jesus Big“? I don’t know yet)

It really does show that Google is interested — in its own way, and in its own language — to being part of the content creation and distribution process. And in this way, furthermore, being a threat to any large traditional media companies who are already doing this.

Some of them may have been upset at Google News “taking away” their visitors because Google was linking to them. Now, they don’t sound so absurd, stupid, or ludicrous at all, because that is *exactly* what Google News will be doing now.

First of all, for any given piece of news, it is dropping news sites which have the same agency news — in other words, you won’t find those traditional media links any more.

Second of all, for some stories — and really, how long will it be before it becomes “most” stories? — it will be hosting the actual agency news on its own site.

Couple that with Google News comments with newsmakers dropping in for their opinion and perspective on things, and you have the recipe for something that is Big and Game Changing about Google News, if things are allowed to continue on this kind of trajectory.

The irony in all of this? Well, the Associated Press, one of these agency wires, is actually a co-operative involving thousands of smaller (and larger) newspapers, television and radio stations across the United States; it was founded on the idea that there was a way to avoid duplication and improve the efficiency in the news gathering process by pooling together some resources.

Now, it seems like rather than being a tool to help beef up (or pad) local and traditional news outlets, it is going to be an instrumental tool in helping one of traditional media’s largest and newest competitors in the online space.

In fact, its a move that may be regarded in the future as a stepping stone that allowed Google to take a very prominent stake in the “online news” portion of how people read, consume and engage with The News.

Linkage:

• Dan Gillmor’s thoughts on this irony echo mine (albeit in much more succinct way)
• Jeff Jarvis thinks that all of this should be an impetus to improve journalism, rather than think of it as a threat to journalism (can I get a hell yeah?)
• Mat Ingram says this is potentially explosive. I agree, except for the “potentially” part :)
• Donna Bogatin makes the case for this being another step in the Google World Order.

So Google News Comments is probably less than a few days old, and I’ve extrapolated how this humble comment system might be the next best thing since sliced bread because of the way that Google is doing it.  Yes, not with a little hyperbole did I write this yesterday.  Now, no question that there are many unresolved issues, including, of course, the irony that Google built itself a $150B market cap on algorithms and not people-powered stuff — which moderating the comments will necessarily involve — or, how it plans to find a way of actually verifying identification in people, particularly in stories where lots of stakeholders might be involved, or finding a way around litigious issues.

However, this business about walled off gardens is probably *as* premature as the “biggest thing since Jesus” post yesterday, if not more so.  Let’s all remember that this Google News Comments is probably in a stage that is so pre-beta it might as well be alpha.  Heck, there’s no easy way of even finding them, even if you happen to be on that “limited” list of users that can even view it.

Besides the fact that there are some good self-serving reasons why Google might do this, perhaps we need to let the dust settle to see how this pans out (yours truly included).  After all, its hard to get worked up over what Google might or might not let you spider in a service that hasn’t even officially rolled out.

[Yes, we can let the cries of hypocrisy ring throughout the blogosphere if and when Google still blocks spiders (and more) if it rolls out in a proper and organized way (i.e. you can find them), because yes, Google will still index and have access to other news items without letting anyone else "see" them in the same way.  On the other hand, I think none of us are still naive to believe that Google "does no evil"].

As Google Blogoscoped points out, there are at least two examples of Google News commenting, and I have to say its pretty darn cool.  One of them involves how branding influences children’s choices, with the example being that the McDonald’s brand caused children to choose healthier choices just by bring wrapped up in a McDonald’s package.

The AP (Associated Press) report quotes a Dr. Strasburger , who is an “an author of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy”, and the Google Comments has Dr. Strasburger making his own comment over here.  What’s interesting is that the AP report distills Dr. Strasburger’s opinion into a two or three sentence sound bite.  Google News’ Comments allows Dr. Strasburger to have a fully developed opinion (and boy, is it an opinion) about the issue.  I think this is a great example of comments adding a good layer of complexity to the topic, because it really allows people to get a bigger, fuller, picture around the story.

And by that, I know that Phillip Lennsen queries as to whether having Google Comments will dilute the power of the story — but that will only happen if its a one -sided comment, or that there is only one comment.  To get a good appreciation of any story is to understand both sides, and what better way is there to do that than actually hear (or, in this case read) what both sides are saying, quite literally, without the hindrance of a filter, or the artificial limitations of what a story is?  And this is even without the regular audience stepping in (which will no doubt come at a later point).

Which leads me to the other interesting issue.

Of course I fully expect someone from McDonald’s to post something — and as the PR part of the blogosphere gears up for this new change in Google News, I expect that its probably filtering through layers of bureaucracy if its reached anyone’s ears at all.  But, getting corporations to think about this issue is another Good Thing.

In order for this to work, Google Comments must (and there’s no reason not to) allow all sides to have their say, including corporations, and other large seemingly faceless entities.  In this case, I fully expect McDonald’s to trot out some kind of PR-flackery.  But maybe they won’t.  Maybe they’ll suprise us with a refreshingly honest answer, and use the Google News Comment system in the same vein and in the same ethos as blogging.

I wonder if this — and not, say, Second Life — is PR’s next greatest frontier?

When corporations are forced to respond on Google News, perhaps we’ll hear disarmingly real and honest answers about the issue — and perhaps that will be the greatest PR lesson that could come from blogging.  Hey, I love blogging as much as the next bloke (or gal), but Google News has the kind of reach that blogging just doesn’t have. 

Lots of unexplored issues here, and the story’s just hours old.  As I said previously, this is something I say with only a dash of hyperbole:  This ‘addition’ to Google News has the potential to be something big, whether its affecting how stories are written, how they are perceived, allowing the development of a lively debate that encourages people to understand the complexities behind the stories … and perhaps even more exciting, how large corporations — and governments? — are held accountable to stories that move across its “desk”, and what they might be encouraged to say when their proverbial feet are held to the metaphorical fire.