Google News, already a good presentation of the day’s – and, moment’s – news is getting better. The site is remaking itself with an easier-to-read format with several choices for how you wish your news to be presented, including with larger photos. Google News is an aggregate site, which means it pulls stories and photos in real time from many legitimate news sources and presents them in a neat format, often offering more than one story on the same topic.
This is highly appealing to people who have the instincts of a journalist and want to see more than one viewpoint or presentation of a story. In the pre-Internet age, the better newspapers (this was before television news became strong, and well before cable news was invented) always subscribed to more than one news service. Choices of the day were The Associated Press, United Press International, The New York Times newswire, and a number of regional services. Good news editors rarely believed one news service when breaking news occurred; they wouldn’t start making decisions for the next paper until a second news service confirmed the story, and then comparison were made for accuracy and the widest possible coverage.
Google News takes us back to those halcyon days for journalists, presenting more than one source of news simultaneously, and allowing the reader to see several versions of the same story so objectivity can occur.
Additionally, Google+ is now a feature on the United States version of the Google News web site so readers/news makers/commentators can quickly add their perspective and take on the news story via a comments section below each story. This allows almost instant feedback and the possibility of questions about a story’s accuracy if a source sees something that may have been reported incorrectly or less than fully. Readers may choose to turn this feature on or off at will
Google News pulls stories from just about every legitimate news source in the country, including The Washington Post, Fox News, Bloomberg, Mashable, MSNBC, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, New York Times, InformationWeek, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, SI.com, CBS, Reuters, BusinessWeek, a host of regional and local newspapers, and much more. World news from many of the world’s most important news outlets is also included.
Google News is recreating a world where unfiltered news can be read without regard to the agenda of who is presenting it, and doing so in an easy-to-read format. In this presidential election year, Google News will be a major player for those interested in a straightforward presentation of news without a prior editorial rinsing for ideological purity.