http://voices.washingtonpost.com/howard-kurtz/2010/09/appeasing_the_google_gods.html
The article I chose to read deals with how online new papers now have to focus more on catchy subject matter in order for their articles to pop up on search engines like Google. It is interesting to think of the news as selling out to the public. But it is also very apparent that an article about how many mistresses a celebrity has or whats the newest natural disaster will get more hits then an article about politicians passing ordinances.
I do not see this as only a criticism of Google, or any other search engine, but also a look at journalists willingness to report certain articles. The author of this article fears that journalism will soon become another popularity contest. I feel that the article does a good job of looking at the public's obsession with using search engines to search for what hot and journalists desire for views. Although many journalists are only concerned with the news aspect many are concerned with getting their work seen by the masses.
The author offers no real solutions to this problem, but seems confident that the track record of real news proves that it can outlast the problem. But the author does jokingly right hot topic search items at the bottom of his article. Although this is a joke it could be used to trick people into opening a link from a search engine.
I read this article too Andy. Now, there's not only competition but competition within search engines..not something we really had to worry about before.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading your blog, I had no idea that search engines would compete and fabricate information so that it would come up in their engines. I think this is weird as well as sad on their part, but I suppose everyone has to do what is necessary to keep themselves in a position to be noticed by the public.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me think about that class discussion other day about how do we actually know if the news is delivering us truthful information. Does this mean our search engine information could be inaccurate as well? Ha...we'll never get the whole truth about anything in a few years, I bet.
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting because like Destine said, I didn't know the extent of the competition. Sure, companies are going to try to beat out one another so internet users will use their engine, but I was unsure of the extremities of this competition between the search engines. I was using Google and noticed recently a semi-new feature on how a complete search comes up of everything you type up to that point. Just showing how the search engines are adding new features to already great systems to try to blow the competition out of the water.
ReplyDeleteThe competition is a good thing. However, it becomes a nuisance when the competition is over horrid things such as popularity and celebrities.
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