Google News snapshot preserves good, but inaccurate, news

GoogleMiners.png

Google News snapshot preserves good, but inaccurate, news (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)

Google can’t tell the difference between all the different West Virginia mining stories that are popping up online. It may take a while for Google to adjust its focus, as the human editors post updates and Google gets around to re-indexing news sites.

While I am not shy about my preference for the depth of written journalism over the flash and immediacy of TV news, this screen cap, taken at 4am — an hour after the bad news was confirmed — demonstrates one of the strengths of live media.

Yes, the online stories can be corrected quickly. Woe unto all the editors of morning print editions who stopped the presses after the good news came out, only to find out a few hours later that the good news wasn’t accurate.

Update: The AP published this photo of stacks of papers with inaccurate headlines.

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