In a moment that is rare for the blogosphere, ESNW makes a defense of the mainstream media.:
First up, you are no doubt aware that I have been tracking the Nancy Kissel trial that is going on in Hong Kong. Every day, I would check the usual suspects: The Standard, South China Morning Post, the eight online Chinese-language newspapers and then I would go to Google for AFP/AP/Reuters agency news. Here is what I found when I Google the words "Nancy Kissel" — the top three references are three Hong Kong blogs: SimonWorld, FlyingChair and EastSouthWestNorth. You won’t find The Standard until the next page, and you will never find the unlinkable South China Morning Post.
Whatever happened to justice in the Internet age? The best coverage comes from reporters like Albert Wong of The Standard and Polly Hui of South China Morning Post, who show up day in and day out in the courtroom. Why should a bunch of bloggers banging on their keyboards in the comfort of their homes or offices soar to the top of Google?
June 16th, 2005 at 5:06 am
“Why should a bunch of bloggers banging on their keyboards in the comfort of their homes or offices soar to the top of Google?”
Err, probably because Google’s search engine doens’t have a ‘quality meter’. It works buy finding the most popular web sites, as measured by how many websites link to them. More here.
Since bloggers are more likely to be linked than ‘official news’ sites (which often have subscription requirements that forbid linking to stories), blog sites are more likely to be given relatively high google ranks.