My exploration of the Google News and The Huffington Post
internet news aggregators was an eye opening experience for me. While I had been directed through links to
stories on Huffington Post, I had never explored the actual website; and Google
News was something I was familiar with only by reputation. After exploring and playing with the features
on both sites, my initial impression that Google News is a better news provider
was confirmed.
Google News is laid out in clean lines, easy to read and
navigate. On my first ever visit, I
immediately noticed the controls available to customize the news to my
preferences, with toggle controls to control the subject of the displayed
articles, controlling the frequency with which stories in the category are
shown, between rarely and always. Also,
there is a keyword box were you can personalize your news display in any way
you choose, and another set of toggles which control how frequently you see
headlines from particular sources. I
fiddled with the controls, changing the sports from always to never, and was
pleased to see the headlines changed immediately in response to my preferences.
Here is a screenshot showing the personalization tools on
the right:
Additionally, as you can see within the above screenshot,
the menu bar to the left of the screen allows you to navigate easily and simply
through different categories of news, including local news, which somehow
changes with my location, presumably through info from the wifi router. Overall, I felt I was being offered a wide
variety of news from various outlets on various topics with no overt political
bias (which is to say, obviously there is political bias in there somewhere, as
it is nearly everywhere; however, I didn't feel like the website was screaming
at me that conservatives are EVIL!!!!! as I felt on other sites, say, for
instance, The Huffington Post….)
I wanted to like The Huffington Post; over the years I have
read several really good articles through their site on emotional, spiritual,
and social issues. Because of this, I
expected a left leaning site, and that wouldn't necessarily have been bad. However, several of the front page headlines
every time I went were anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-law
enforcement, or something else that would be considered more right wing, and
they frankly weren't very kind about it or very objective in their
presentation, I felt. In the following
screenshot of the front page, you can see the sarcasm directed at the Republican
party front and center:
and surrounded by stories that appear to be anti-government,
anti-white, and anti-police. While I
value an alternative viewpoint to my generally moderate conservatism, when it
is presented in a manner that I perceive as hateful, I don't get much benefit
from reading it; it just makes me mad. I
also didn't like that the featured blog posts on the left are laid out in a
manner that looks like "news", but are actually just basically
opinion pieces.
In addition to the political bias, the manner in which The
Huffington Post was laid out was more difficult for me to interact with than
Google News. The Huffington Post looks
to me like a digitized version of a more traditional paper newspaper, but I
don't think that translates well to a traditional computer (I realize, though,
that it may translate VERY well to tablets, which I don't own and so couldn't
try out. ) For me, the busier layout was more difficult to navigate and peruse.
Many of the headlines on "HuffPo" (as it is known)
also had wording which seemed to me more emotional than journalistic, such as
"These Workouts Are More Effective Than Running." While health and fitness are valid
journalistic story lines, the above reads more like opinion than facts, leading
me to think, "What do they mean by effective? Pretty sure nothing is more
effective at improving running than actual running." I realize the line is
designed to get people to click on it, and it probably works, but I think it
appeals to the lower common denominators rather than encouraging people to think
rationally, which is my major complaint about much of modern media, online and
otherwise.
All in all, I found Google News to be a better news
aggregator than The Huffington Post. It
was easy to read, navigate, and personalize. While it worked great for my political and cultural point of view, it would also be easy for a person with very different opinions to take the site and personalize it to suit their needs,
making it a better all-around site than The Huffington Post.
