In an attempt to make Google News more informative and open, the platform is introducing a ‘Local Source’ tag to easily display local news reports separately.
Google News has always been the front-runner in the news delivery department, collecting and displaying the most relevant articles from the interwebs to all of its users. The introduction of features like “In Depth” and “AMP” is an attempt by the internet giant, Google to make its news offering more robust. You can also search for a particular topic and track news in real-time on the platform, if you didn’t know that already.
Today, Google in a blogpost has announced that its finally introducing a way to empower regional news sources and micro-blogs. These sources are sometimes the first ones to report a local news or sighting. These regional news aggregators suffer under the shadow of the renowned publishers and reporters. The regional sources play an important role in uncovering the truths behind the local news, before it is actually picked up by the influential publishers. So, Google has finally implemented the ‘Local Source’ tag to give recognition to the local news reporters who deserve it the most.
James Morehead, the Product Manager of Google News says that,
This new feature brings greater exposure for local news outlets reporting on stories that have gone national. “Local Source” articles are identified automatically by looking at where a publisher has written about in the past and comparing that to the story location.
Morehead in the blogpost also praises the local reporters, who are more closely acquainted to the people and the town. They are the ones who do all the ground-work and research that it picked up larger news networks, thus leaving the regional source unknown at the bottom rung. This minor feature introduction by Google will now allow locals to discover more news about their own town, that too from the perspective of a native resident. The news offering will thus be more thorough and raw.
The combination of ‘Local Source’ tags and AMP(Accelerated Mobile Pages) feature that was introduced just a couple weeks ago, will result in a solid first-hand experience for the users. AMP reduces the data usage and helps load pages as fast as possible.
‘Local Source’ Tags are now available in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News iOS and Android apps. This feature is not a beta test but is available globally to all Google News users around the globe.
