Actual headline featured in Google News’ top U.S. stories section:

Gonzales confirmed: war criminal to head US Justice Department

On a somewhat related note, I received the following e-mail from Google News recently that might be of interest to other bloggers wondering what the criteria are for inclusion as Google News sources:

Hi Michelle,

Thank you for your note. We have reviewed www.michellemalkin.com but cannot include it in Google News at this time. We do not include news-related blogs or other news-related sites that are written and maintained by a single individual. Similarly, we do not include sites that do not have a formal editorial review process. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.

Regards,
The Google Team

By coincidence, reader Patsy Griffiths alerts me that Charles Johnson at the indispensable Little Green Footballs received a similar turndown from Google News:

Hi Charles,

Thank you for your note. We reviewed http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog and cannot include it in Google News at this time. We do not include sites that are purely news aggregators, and we were not able to find any stories on your site that were not from outside sources.

We will log your site for consideration should we alter our policy. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards,
The Google Team

Glad to know I’m in good company, but as Charles points out, Google News’ criteria are rather odd:

I replied, pointing out that LGF has become rather well-known for a story that was not “from an outside source”—Bush Guard Documents: Forged—and offered to give them links to numerous other original pieces we’ve published. Our first request received a reply in less than an hour. So far there’s no response to our second request.

Note that the Google News index now searches quite a few blogs (including Power Line, Polipundit, and Wonkette) and includes other sites with, to say the least, serious credibility problems (including hard-core anarchist site Infoshop, and Justin Raimondo’s paleocon antisemitic site antiwar.com). In this context, Google’s reply to me seems rather odd.

Yes, and especially so when you see that LGF is excluded from Google News sources while uruknet.info, the nutball news outlet that labeled Alberto Gonzales a “war criminal” and that publishes propaganda reports from Saddam Hussein’s legal team, gets top Google News headline treatment.

Something’s definitely screwy. In my letter, Google News said “we do not include sites that do not have a formal editorial review process.” Is the presumption that group blogs have a formal editorial review process because they are run by more than one person, but that an individual blog is incapable of satisfactory self-editing? If an individual blog does investigative reporting or publishes original documents, as LGF has done and as this blog occasionally does, is the “formal editorial review process” requirement waived?

Why is Democratic Underground a Google News source, but not LGF? Why is a blog that recycles gossip and drinking games a Google News source, but not this blog?

Got something to say about all this? Send your comments to source-suggestions@google.com

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