Google’s CEO of the “news” – as reported on Politico – Google’s CEO urges the news business to present the news that readers want to see based on what they’ve read in the past
That point of view has a lot of merit, but also some big red flags. If you login to Google News and customize your news feed, you get that today. Based on the keywords you select and the past reading record, it proposes news stories that seem to match your interests, which means you find more stories you’re likely to read which is a good thing.
Now the bad part – feeding you stories that only agree with your existing ideas or interests is like feeding a child a diet of candy. It will tend to feed extreme views of the news – this is why I don’t read things on Free Republic or WorldNet Daily – it’s a diet of the same views over and over again – the same thing with Daily Koz and Huffington Post.
None of which goes to the core problem – the advertising model of news gathering is dying quickly – if there is no money to pay for gathering news, where will news come from? Government? Youtube? Taxes? Fees for online reading?
The NY Times already sort of does this – they offer the “list of the most emailed stories”, which presumably is the stories that people found the most interesting. That list often is very different than the stories the Times gives space to or features.
If the Times starts making staff assignments to create the kind of news that people want to read, will they end up being Fox News? Is that a good thing?