With today’s society always on the go news has become something that can at times be very over loading. Depending on the age of the person you ask news can mean anything from the stuff TMZ puts out all the way to what is going on in the world. Social media avenues have made getting the news quick and easy, only picking what stories you want to read based on a simple headline. A few simple words put together with one purpose, to grab a reader’s attention and hopefully keep it for the entire article. If you are anything like me the news can become somewhat of a downer at times and at others a good laugh. I follow different local news channels on my Facebook page and only two national news sites. Sometimes I compare the same story between the different outlets, the people they quote are normally different, but the biggest difference is always in the numbers. Some will quote high numbers during an event while others will quote low.
So let’s compare two sites Google News and The Dallas
Morning News (DMN). The Dallas Morning News is
a very good and local news source, for the Dallas Fort Worth area. If you like the “old” newspaper style then
DMN has that option for you. Just by
looking at the home page on both sites they have a lot to offer. Google News’s home page looks like a typical
news page except for a personalized suggestion section, in this area you can
tell google what you are interested in.
There are 3 sections on Google that can be a bit confusing; Spotlight,
Most Popular, and Top Stories. All 3
have different stories, but some do overlap.
Where on DMN has The Latest, which is constantly updating based on the
posted times of the stories, and Featured Stories which has all kinds of stories
such as the Fair to NASA. Google is more
of a gatherer where DMN has a staff they can rely on for the foot work.
I think Google News does a good job of showing where the
viewer will be taken once they click on the link. Giving the viewer the choice of do they trust
or want to read anything from that source.
The personalized section is another plus Google has, which is just
giving the reader the feeling of more control.
With that being said the good things about DMN’s Latest section right
from the get go, is great. Keeping you up to date on things going on in
an ever changing day to day world. More
in depth news about the things happening closer to home.
The bad things I see about using Google News are when you go
over a headline you see an opinion tag, that doesn’t always link up to the
original source, along with a Wikipedia
tag that some keywords in the article or headline trigger. These
can be confusing and sometimes misleading for a reader. DMN could put some of their National/World
links in with the Latest and even on their front page, even though it is a
local news source some more attention to issues away from home would be nice. Also, they seem to be very wrapped up in the
local sporting events, which once you find one thing about a team how many
different takes does a news source need?
It becomes too much.
With the good and bad being said I still think The Dallas
Morning News is better. Google News just
gathers all the news they can find and put it in one place, but DMN has writers
that work very hard to gather information and publish it with their name on
it. They have everything from local to
world news in one place with no links to Wikipedia and if there are opinions
you know who is giving it without any confusion.
Oh look I have a Twitter :)
