Will Google News Force News Sites To Change?

from the hopefully dept

If you hadn't realized it by now, online news, by itself, is a commodity product. So many repeat stories that all the different news sources publish (often taken directly from the same wire feed). Over at Business 2.0, they're wondering if the rise of Google News (which lets people quickly see just how exactly the same the various news sites are) will push the news sites to build up a personality. Instead of just reporting the news straight, they may start to push personality and opinion pieces front and center, in order to attract visitors. If they're just spewing out the facts, people will realize they can go anywhere. However, if they consistently publish strong opinion pieces from well known talent, then it differentiates the sites, and could bring more regular visitors. I certainly think most news sites should have realized this long before Google News ever showed up. It's easy to find different sites that publish the same news story - finding an interesting commentary on that news is much more difficult.

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