2009/6/22 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: Journalists use each other's work all the time without, as far as I know, paying each other anything. It's a completely ridiculous complaint.

2009/6/22 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: Various organisations such as AP make good money selling their stories. There are still some freelance journalists left and traditionally stories were purchased from local newspapers. The complaint is that we benefit from their front line reporting which is rather expensive for them without carrying out front line reporting of their own. Iran to report on events if people are only going to read your reports as rehashed by blogs and wikipedia. -- geni

Remember, we have people in Iran. Fred

On 22/06/2009, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually, the Wikipedia does at least usually refer to the original source; most conventional media don't even bother. So, while they don't get link juice, they will get some click-throughs. -- -Ian Woollard "All the world's a stage... but you'll grow out of it eventually."

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Slightly tangential, a few days ago I was trying to figure out how this Google News listing algorithm works and how much traffic it's driving to us. The most interesting thing I found was this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo It was linked from the World News section of Google News; I noticed it in the last few hours of 16 June UTC (and at the time it was listed, it had only a single author and had been created that day). According to http://stats.grok.se/en/200906/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo , it only got 35 hits for 16 June. The next day it got over 300 hits, but I suspect most of these were internal hits, from the editors discussing whether to include it on the main page for "In the news", from the current events portal, and from [[Omar Bongo]]. I'm not sure if the Google News link persisted into 17 June or not. Based on what I've seen of articles with multiple links to recent news stories, regardless of when they were created or how many people have contributed, I suspect that inclusion in Google News is based on traffic and/or links *from* Wikipedia to the stories Google News has identified as a group. I haven't seen any cases where an article was listed with only a single link to a current news story. It might be worthwhile to do some tests by creating articles in a controlled manner with different numbers of links to news stories, to get a better sense of what it takes for Google News to pick up a new article. -Sage (User:Ragesoss)

Steve Summit wrote: There's room for some amusement here ([[Raymond Smullyan]]-type self-reference or the worm [[Ouroboros]], depending on your preferred reading). The media is increasingly self-swallowing and at the same time journalists are writing more and more about the media. But what WP does cannot possibly displace totally "conventional journalism" in the sense of originating reporting. I'd certainly be interested in what someone from the wire services had to say, rather than those who are in it for a Pulitzer. And there are other angles, of course. Proper information is what moves markets, so those who have that information in a timely way will always have something to sell. Charles

Yes, being listed on Google News can certainly bring focus to the articles affected, both for good and ill. Those listed right now are: Speaker of the British House of Commons election, 2009 David S. Rohde 20 June 2009 Taza bombing http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn How about a category" Category:Google News Maintenance would consist of adding the category to articles currently featured and removing it from those no longer featured. Fred

2009/6/22 Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>et>: Maybe should be "has been linked from", maybe with a template on the talk page? Or at least a list of sightings. - d.

Of course, as hand work it is hopeless. Fred

David Gerard wrote: So we should be understanding ... Interesting. They're attempting to raise money by circulating people saying "you should send us money". We should try that. Oh ... Charles

2009/6/22 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>: It has been suggested that in some cases at least news organisations should adopt a non profit model. -- geni

2009/6/22 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>: I would characterise their original email as "salescall-with-menaces." - d.

Nathan wrote It's certainly not reasonable to ask anyone to pay to link to your webpage. If you don't think people should be able to link freely to your content, don't put it on the Web. Of course it's economics telling here, and the fact that newspapers weren't smart enough to set up a cartel a decade or more ago, so that online news would be subscriber-only. Charles

David Gerard wrote: I think that falls squarely into the category of "You couldn't make this stuff up!" Incredible, simply incredible. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen