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24 Jul 2010 19:57

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U.S.: Snaps: Iowa’s broken Lake Delhi dam – a major flyover state story

  • After the Tennessee flooding in may, the mainstream media was criticized. Why? Because they underplayed a major tragedy that affected a lot of people – but people in a smaller state not on the East or West Coast. So, with that in mind, here’s a quick comparison of the coverage the dam breakage in Iowa has been getting so far. As of 8:29 p.m. EST, it’s not on the Reuters or BBC front pages at all. The New York Times only just put it up moments ago, and they’ve buried it. How about other sites?
  • MSNBC: Main imageMSNBC: Main imageIt’s the lead story at MSNBC, complete with a very dramatic photo to top it all off – pretty much the kind of play you’d expect.
  • CNN: Lead story (Breaking news)CNN appears to be pulling out all the stops for this story, asking for reader reaction to go with the photos on the site.

 

  • Washington Post: Lead imageIt seems like it might initially easy to miss, but the story, complete with dramatic photos, is on the front of the site.
  • Google News: Lead itemGoogle’s algorithms put it right up top, with the oil spill and the Afghanistan story. Earlier today, the German festival stampede was up top.

 

  • AOL News: Secondary leadThe site we occasionally freelance for chose to go with stampede at the German festival instead of the flooding as lead, though it’s up there.
  • Fox News: Secondary leadFox News had it on their front page, but it was below the captured NATO soldiers story and tied to other rain-related stories.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

03 Jul 2010 11:37

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U.S.: Snaps: The Democratic Republic of Congo oil blast, underplayed?

  • We needed a new feature, and we think we have a pretty good one. Basically, we’re going to take a big story and see how it’s being covered on the front page of major news sites. Is it getting underplayed? Overplayed? This time around, We’re tackling the horrific oil tanker blast in Congo, which is new enough that a lot of people haven’t heard about it (it broke in the middle of the night in the U.S.). Otherwise, it’s a slow news day. On the downside, though, the story has no art, which might hurt its play. Let’s compare:
  • BBC: Top of the pageAs might be expected, considering the nature of the very deadly incident, BBC gave it top-of-the-front-page treatment.
  • CNN: Secondary lead storyWhile it was CNN’s top news story for a while (and worthy of an alert), it was replaced by a story about slain cops.

 

  • New York Times: BuriedThe New York Times, on the other hand, didn’t even bother to give it display play, instead putting it in their wire-stories-only slot.
  • Google News: right at the topGoogle News, which chooses its stories by computer algorithms, gave it much nicer coverage, just above Serena Williams.

 

  • MSNBC: Huge headlineMSNBC.com made the story their main news item with a huge headline, while giving Serena Williams art play off to the side.
  • Fox News: BuriedFox News buried the story even further than the New York Times did, preferring instead to lead with Joe Biden’s visit to Iraq.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 May 2010 18:24

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Offbeat: Google News run by computer with juvenile sense of humor

  • “Jack Meoff” ≠ Jake Tapper. The other day, the poor ABC News political reporter got mis-bylined by the computer-driven service, instead calling Tapper by his real name. The article was about some topic we don’t care about, but the second we realized it got turned into a childish prank, we immediately showed interest. Good show, Google News, getting regular people like us interested in the news. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

10 Feb 2010 22:09

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Biz: Rejoice! The AP’s long absence on Google News has ended

  • 7 weeks without the Associated Press on Google; nobody noticed source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Feb 2010 22:56

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Tech: Facebook as news source: The danger of getting news from friends

  • Facebook is a unique and wonderful artery to our friends’ lives and interests. But if we define our reading by our friends’ libraries, we will all find what we already expected rather than what we need to know.
  • Atlantic writer Derek Thompson • Regarding recent reports that Facebook has become a primary source of finding news for many people. He brings up a good point, one that news like this only emphasizes: With the change in journalism to something suggested to us by friends, all cookies instead of a well-balanced meal, we end up limiting our information to what we want to know rather than what we need to know. And, considering how often it shows up in politics already, that’s pretty dangerous. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2009 21:58

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Biz: Die in a fire, Cablevision: Newsday’s charging for stories

Dudes, if you’re going to completely block off your content like this, take your stuff off Google News. OK? Dead to us: Newsday. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Nov 2009 20:57

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Biz, Tech: Google to News Corp.: Come on, we dare you to block us

  • Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.
  • A statement from Google • Describing its stance on the whole Rupert Murdoch thing we posted about yesterday. That sounds like a dare to us. Will News Corp. match Google’s dare with a double dare? Will Murdoch then pull out a double dog dare, or will he go straight to the triple dog dare? We don’t know, but we’re glued to our seats in excitement. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

06 Oct 2009 10:40

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Biz, Tech: Blog or news source? The inconsistent ways of Google News

  • Dividing content along these lines is like classifying brownies based on whether they were baked in aluminum or glass pans. There’s no difference, and it obscures what you really want know: if they contain chocolate chips.
  • Neiman Journalism Lab blogger Zachary M. Seward • Making a strong, interesting point about Google News’ new, and very inconsistent, labeling policies of blogs. Here’s one example: Talking Points Memo recently switched back to being a news source from being a blog. Here’s another (weirder) one: Gizmodo is a news source, and Deadspin is a blog, despite the fact that both are owned by Gawker Media. And the process of getting added to Google News, anyway, seems completely arbitrary. By the way, we love how Seward worded this. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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