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Google's New Meta-Tags For News Story Authors

Posted by timothy on from the tree-of-attribution dept.

EreIamJH writes "Google News is experimenting with meta-tags in an effort to ensure that the correct news source is credited with an article. The original-source meta-tag will identify the newspaper that breaks a story, while syndication-source is for everyone who repeats the story. Both meta-tags can appear multiple times — for instance an article that sources information from other articles would include an original-source tag for each article used in preparing the new article. While the intention is worthy, I look forward to lots of snarky blogger fights as journalists vent their hurt feelings for having been omitted as an original source."

6 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by voidptr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is there also a tag for the news source that properly edits it? The one, for example, that knows the difference between "brakes" and "breaks"?

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    1. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is there also a tag for the news source that properly edits it? The one, for example, that knows the difference between "brakes" and "breaks"?

      Then there is the difference between "is credit with" and "is credited with". I wish Slashdot "editors" would call themselves Slashdot "reposters" or Slashdot "janitors", then I'd stop expecting them to grok basic grammar.

    2. Re:Really? by bidule · · Score: 3, Insightful

      English is a spoken language. There's no latin declension or other complications that forces you to think before you talk. Sadly, written English is a different dialect that many natives fail to master.

      Whatever they write made sense to them because they read it back aloud. When you truly master reading, you never hear the words but directly capture their meaning from the shape of the letters. The effect of these misspellings are the same as a terrible foreign accent to the literate reader.

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  2. You guys can... by frozentier · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You guys can argue about "brake" and "break", I'm just trying to figure out WTF "snarky" means, and why anyone wanting to sound credible would even use it.

  3. This is necessary why? by notsoclever · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whatever happened to the already-existing "cite" element and attribute that have been a standard part of HTML for years?

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  4. Implicitly allows inclusion by mattr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    By tagging as first source, the publisher implicitly allows inclusion in a news search application. Using Google's tag means allowing specificially Google. Other news companies may not be in as good a position.
    Google is also then free to copy text from any other source running the same story since the first source allows it.
    Google no longer needs to try figure out which source was first.
    And, Google now becomes non-evil and a champion for being precise about authorship, which reflects on its academic search application.
    And, it makes it easy for Google to target independent journalists to hire in some way in the future. Perhaps it will start that project in Australia if Murdoch really gets them steamed.