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Google News changes highlight sources in coverage of Oslo attacks

avatar by Published July 24, 2011 5:44 am Updated July 25, 2011 5:47 am

Google News
Design changes introduced last week to Google News make it easier to filter information quickly, most immediately about the Norway shooting that has left at least 90 dead. The changes that were made live Thursday decluttered Google’s top story display and highlighted new labeling introduced in May.

With the labeling, links now carry a description, including: “Highly-cited,” “In-depth,” “Opinion,” “Wikipedia” and today, “From Norway.” During breaking news (and anytime), these labels can help readers find not only the information they seek, but exactly the type of news they want; someone ready for analysis can easily locate it, someone still searching for basic facts can find those. The labels also promote news literacy, reminding readers to assess a source’s authority using several measures, including crowdranking (“highly-cited”) and proximity to the information. The “From Norway” label signals that local knowledge can be different from an outsider’s understanding.

As Nieman’s Megan Garber wrote last month, Google News is aiming to strike a balance “between total personalization and total universality; between breadth and depth; between pre-existing interests and discovery; between want to know and need to know; between expectation and serendipity.”

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  • http://www.poynter.org Poynter

    That’s a good question. I wonder whether this foreshadows a change in labeling that will lead to the elimination of “blog” (and other format labels) or whether Google decision-makers think labeling by form, in the case of blogs, is a way of signaling the type of content it contains.

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  • http://twitter.com/westseattleblog West Seattle Blog

    Great – but if only they would get rid of that ridiculous (blog) scarlet letter that is still appended to some of us in the index. Blog is only a publishing format. It’s only still in our name because right now, changing the name would solve more problems than it would solve. We are highly trafficked, highly cited, highly credible, award-winning (national and regional) … so why can’t the big G just let our work speak for itself? 

  • Anonymous

    How about a Romanesko item on that astonishing WSJ editorial effectively tying the Oslo attack to Islamic extremists? It’s still visible on the WSJ website.