GoogleNews or GoogleViews?
: GoogleNews’ sources keep getting stranger and stranger — all the while, it still does not include weblogs.
I just did a search on “MoveOn” to find the link to a NYTimes story for a comment on the Hitler commercial (below) and on that list of results at GoogleNews, I found: CounterPunch, GOPUsa, PHXNews, Mens News Daily, NewsMax, RushLimbaugh.com, WorldNet Daily, TownHall.com, CyberCast News, Christian Broadcasting Network, One Thousand Reasons, ChronWatch, Guerilla News Network, Alternet, Muslim WakeUp!, Center for American Progress, Intellectual Conservative, FrontPageMag.
Now clearly, I have nothing against opinion online! Many of these sites are nothing but opinion and have less analysis and balance and news judgment and more of an axe to grind than many a fine weblog.
Google benefits greatly from weblogs; as fear keeps Monsters Inc. powered, links keep Google powered. You’d think they’d include at least the top bloggers. I want that as a reader service: I’d far rather find what Josh Marshall or Andrew Sullivan or Mickey Kaus has to say about this than most of the sites I just listed!
And whether with or without bloggers in the mix, the list of sources is getting rather funky. I’m not saying that shouldn’t be part of a Google news search but I am saying that they often clutter up the results when what I’m looking for is just a quote or a fact or a date, not a tirade.
So here’s a suggestion, Google, for a new service to go alongside GoogleNews:
GoogleViews: a complilation and search of top opinion from editorial pages, weblogs, advocacy sites.
If you like GoogleViews, you can give me a share of stock….
: UPDATE: Dana Blankenhorn calls GoogleNews’ discrimination against any content created by weblog a “scandal.”
