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Google
News does one heck of a job, creating the news
gathering algo. Creating a well-balanced display of
news choices, as is listed at Top
Google News Sites,
must not be an easy thing to do. But, overall, I
like the results I am getting. It looks pretty well
spread out. One might question some of the
characters that get in, but hey, that's part of
diversity and free speech.
However, there is no reason to read the Washington
Post (2 flashing ads plus popups), when you can
read the same article at the BBC, with NO ads. I am
prejudiced - I will always pick the British option
- either the BBC, or the Guardian - two of the
best, who actually allow you to read the text in
peace, without RUDELY beating you senseless with
visual distraction.
Online newspaper web site readership is sharply
down. I can guess why. They all seem to think that
annoying the heck out of you, is the best way to
go. They are wrong. In their lust for the almighty
buck, they ruin the entire news experience, and
drive you away with infernal, devil-conceived
distraction. Impolite, rude, and annoying
motion.
Suggestions
to Improve Google
News
1.
A news story is told on 450 news sites, and NOT ONE
of them cites the specific, actual source
(FDA). They all get the story from somewhere else,
but cannot be bothered with telling you just what
that source is.
2. Where is the editor? There are
frequent misspellings and grammatical errors.
Google leaves the content up to the providers, who
aren't very good at what they do.
3. Photos often do not represent what the news
story is about, and are overly sensational. When
you go to the link, the photo is not there. This is
deceptive photo-baiting. This may result in a rapid
loss of credibility for the site.
4. No standardization for headlines -
First-word Caps (Standard Titling vs. Normal
sentence), author punctuation (none vs. hyphen),
etc.
5. About half of the articles include
authors (Bloomberg, NYT, Washington Post),
half do not.
6. About 1/10 provide location in the
headline (AP, USA Today), about 90% do not.
7. Misleading links -
"ABC News" is really "ABC News Blog", as well as
"ABC News"
"New York Times" is really "New York Times Blog",
as well as "New York Times"
"San Francisco Chronicle" is really "San Francisco
Chronicle Blog", etc.
"USA Today" is really "USA Today Blog", etc.
STOP LYING TO ME! And wasting my time.
On the other hand, "The Wall Street Journal Blogs"
is listed as "Wall Street Journal Blogs". Kudos to
WSJ.
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