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October 13, 2005BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Separate Yet Equal News Searches
Yahoo's news search page is now returning results from blogs.
It's a noteworthy development in citizen journalism, the kind that should move men like Dan Gillmor of Bayosphere and Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine to give Yahoo an unqualified, virtual pat on the back. Instead, they are voicing concern that the search engine is foolishly trying to "separate" the blog results from those generated by mainstream media outlets.
I'm sorry guys, but I don't get the griping. And I don't say that as an MSMer/wannabe blogger; I say it as a news consumer. I personally don't want to search on a term like "Harriet Miers" and have to sort through hundreds of irrelevant blog entries to find the needle in the haystack you seem to want Yahoo to build.
What you see as a patronizing slap against bloggers, treating them as "secondary news sources," strikes me instead as Yahoo's attempt to serve a diverse audience. Those of us who love blogs too often forget that not everybody does. Many people find blogs annoying, unreliable, biased and sensational -- the same kinds of complaints bloggers lodge against the MSM. Many more like to get their news from traditional news outlets simply because they favor that format. Others, like me, prefer a news diet that features both blogs and MSM, but we appreciate technology that helps us organize our media plates.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with Yahoo trying to cater to the needs of as many news consumers as possible. In this information age, that is just good business sense.
"Separate but equal" was rightly discredited long ago as an acceptable approach to dividing men by race, but it is possible to have separate yet equal news searches at Yahoo.
UPDATE: Bloggers Relations Blog, which is published by the Internet consulting and public affairs firm Issue Dynamics, also has commented on this issue.
"If online searches turn up blogs and mainstream media sources together, there are going to be many people who confuse the two. This is not the end of the world if you are just the average reader looking for information about a topic. But what [about] policymakers? What about academic researchers? There are many important documents/reports/speeches, etc., that rely on information found online. The source of that information matters a great deal. Blogs and mainstream media are both very useful, but the two should not be confused."
Posted by | 01:03 PM
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