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Automated News Sites?
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ckil-@TheHub.capcollege.bc.ca
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Mar 19, 2003 17:14 PST
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I fully appreciate the irony of the fact that it took a story in a print
medium (today's Toronto Globe & Mail) to alert me to the increasing
automation of Web news sites. (That will teach me not to ignore the Online
Journalism Review!)
In particular, I learned about Google's news service
(http://news.google.com/), which uses a program to search the Web for news
stories, links, and graphics -- and then assigns priorities to these
stories. No editors need apply.
Though Google News is supposed to be a beta version, it's been running
since last fall and looks pretty slick to me. The headlines are
informative and followed by a blurb consisting of the first few words of
the story, plus related links--and each story even lists how many links
readers can follow. This is obviously useful to anyone who wants to see
how different media are covering a given story.
From my own cursory exploration of Google News, I've been struck by a
couple of things: the big stories often come from unexpected sites, like
the Straits Times (Singapore) story on the pending war in Iraq. And each
story tells you how long it's been on the site: maybe 7 or 8 hours, maybe
15 minutes.
The Globe story mentioned a Canadian news site, Canoe
(http://www.canoe.ca/), which is also automating much of news feed from
Canadian Press and Associated Press.
Perhaps this is old news to some of you, but I'd be curious to know your
opinion of, um, editor-free news sites.
Crawford Kilian
http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/dept/cmns/crofpers.html
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