Sunday, 31 July 2011

Google News Blog

Google News Blog

A Few Google News Design Changes

Posted: 21 Jul 2011 02:49 PM PDT

Posted by Jasson Schrock, User Experience Designer

Beginning today in the U.S. English edition of News, you may notice a few changes in the look and feel. This is part of a Google-wide initiative to improve your experience, and today we're happy to extend this to Google News.

For starters, we've cleaned up the Google News homepage a bit. With fewer visual distractions and less clutter on the page, it should be faster to find the news important to you. The editions menu and "Personalize" button at the top should be easier to see. The "Personalize" button links to your recently consolidated personalization settings including your preferences for topics and favorite sources. Throughout the site, all the features and functionality are still there, but this updated design is aligned with the new consistent look across other recently updated Google sites like Gmail, Maps and Search.

Before

After

In the coming months, you'll continue to see more improvements to the layout and design of the site, and we'll also expand internationally.

Shareable Google News badges for your favorite topics

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 04:00 PM PDT

Posted by Natasha Mohanty, Engineer, Google News

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

On Google News, the average reader of political news has read 20 articles about politics in the last six months. Where do you stand?

Starting today, in the U.S. edition of Google News, you can see how voracious a news reader you are by earning Google News badges as you read articles about your favorite topics. The more you read, the higher level badge you'll receive, starting with Bronze, then moving up the ladder to Silver, Gold, Platinum and finally, Ultimate.



We have more than 500 badges available, so no matter what kind of news you're into, there's a badge out there for you. Here's a taste:


Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends. Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation or just plain brag about how well-read you are. You can also add custom sections by hovering on a badge and clicking "add section" to read more about your favorite topics. To get started with badges, visit Google News from a signed-in account with web history enabled and then visit this page on our Help Center for instructions.

This is just the first step—the bronze release, if you will—of Google News badges. Once we see how badges are used and shared, we look forward to taking this feature to the next level.

In the spirit of continually trying to improve Google News, we have heard loud and clear from the many of you who asked us to separate our Sci/Tech section into two distinct sections. We are happy to report that we have now done this for all English editions, with more languages coming soon. We also combined some personalization settings from the "News for you" and News Settings menu into one handy sidebar at the top right corner of the home page, so you can easily tell us what you want to read on your Google News.



We hope you'll badge up on Google News to keep track of what you're reading, read more of what you love and share your passions with your friends.

Applauding the 2011 Knight News Challenge winners

Posted: 22 Jun 2011 11:49 AM PDT

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Public Policy Blog)

Over the past few months, we've announced $5 million in grants to be distributed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the International Press Institute—two non-profit organizations developing new approaches to journalism in the digital age—and we're pleased to congratulate the first initiatives that have been selected as part of that funding.

Today at M.I.T., the Knight Foundation showcased 16 projects selected as the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge. Now in its fifth year, this media-innovation contest included $1 million in support from Google. As you'll see in the full list of winners, these initiatives come from organizations large and small and are reminders that entrepreneurship can be sparked anywhere. Here are just a few examples of the creative ways the journalism community around the world is merging traditional skills with an online landscape:

  • At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, OpenBlock Rural will use its seed money to work with local governments and community newspapers across the state to collect, aggregate and publish data.

  • In Virginia, the Miller Center Foundation's State Decoded will serve as a platform to display state codes, court decisions and information from legislative tracking services to make government more understandable to the average citizen.

  • The Chicago Tribune will collaborate with the Investigative Editors & Reporters organization and The Spokesman-Review on a set of open-source, web-based tools that make it easier for journalists to use and analyze data.

  • Liverpool, U.K.-based ScraperWiki will bring its experiences with public data to journalism camps in 12 U.S. states.

  • Chile's El Mostrador will develop an editorial and crowdsourced database to bring greater transparency to potential conflicts of interest.

  • Ushahidi will build off its past crisis efforts to improve information-verification across email, Twitter, web feeds and text messages.


Other winning proposals tell rich multimedia stories, bridge the gap between traditional and citizen media and further improve the utility of data to journalists. Our sister program in partnership with the International Press Institute is also well underway. The entries in that competition are now in and the winners will be announced later this summer. We look forward to seeing the impacts these initiatives have on digital journalism and hope they encourage continued experimentation and innovation at the grassroots level.

Posted by Jim Gerber, Director, Strategic Partnerships, News

Rededicating the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:00 AM PDT

Posted by Sean Carlson, Global Communications & Public Affairs

Outside 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the front pages of newspapers from all 50 U.S. states mark the entrance to the Newseum. Inside the lobby, a gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs confronts visitors with moments of triumph and tragedy captured on camera. The museum's corridors display exhibit after exhibit highlighting the role of journalism and journalists throughout history.

One of the Newseum's most moving tributes is its Journalists Memorial, a wall of glass paneling imprinted with the names of more than 2,000 people around the world who have died while reporting the news. Nearby kiosks narrate their stories, an online database enables anybody with Internet access to learn more, and our new YouTube channel further remembers these fallen journalists through video.

Earlier this week, Krishna Bharat, founder and head of Google News, spoke at the memorial's annual rededication ceremony. As you can watch in the video below, he began by reflecting on what motivated those being honored "to walk a path that was not paved with gold, but with danger."

Over the course of his address, Krishna discussed the importance of a free press to society and of high-quality content to the web, observed the rising number of online journalists and bloggers coming under attack, and recounted incidents reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists. On a personal level, he also shared his memories as a boy in India and the influence of his grandfather in inspiring his appreciation for news.

"The journalists we remember and honor today chose lives that were full of meaning and purpose," he concluded. "Let their stories not be forgotten. Let us repeat them. Let us re-tweet them. And let us print them on our pages so the world knows that silencing a journalist simply does not pay."

To their families, friends, and colleagues, we extend our sympathy and respect.

Expanding Google News for more variety and multimedia

Posted: 16 May 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Posted by Chase Hensel, Associate Product Manager, Google News

Every day, Google News crawls through thousands of news articles to present you with the most relevant and recent stories. For a long time, we've realized that bringing relevant news to the surface is only part of the puzzle—it should also be easy to scan for stories of interest and dig deeper when you find them.

The newly expandable stories on Google News in the U.S., released today, give you greater story diversity with less clutter.

Now you can easily see more content, see less of what you don't use and have a more streamlined experience:
  • Click-to-expand: Each story cluster is collapsed down to one headline with the exception of the top story. When something grabs you, click nearby anywhere but the title to expand the story box.
  • Labeled diversity: For stories you've expanded, you'll see genre labels for some of the additional articles that explain why they were chosen and how they add value. For example, you might see something labeled as an "Opinion" piece or an indication that an article is "In Depth."
  • Multimedia and more: Within each expanded story box, you'll find a sliding bar of videos and photos, links to related sections and easier-to-use sharing options, so you can quickly digest the sights and sounds of a news story, dig into different types of publications and share what you find interesting with one click.
  • Personalized top stories: The Top Stories section is expanded to six or more stories from three to give you more topic diversity. The first three stories remain unpersonalized and the same as before. The rest may be personalized based on your interests. To personalize your Google News experience you can click on "Edit" under "News for you." You can choose the "Standard Edition" if you don't want personalization.
  • Less is more: The default view is now the popular "One Column" (formerly "Section") view. We merged List View into Top Stories, as described above. You can still switch to "Two Column" view, which resembles classic Google News.

We hope you like these changes—please share your feedback and visit our Help Center to learn more.
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