Out in the Code

Jake Tapper is one of the better political journalists we’ve seen in a while. He’s fair, he cuts through clutter, and he always dishes more than enough context to go with the movement of the day.

Turns out he’s a pretty skilled crisis communicator, too. He just didn’t realize it until today.

Tapper wrote a piece about the back-and-forth in the Romney/Obama camps, but something happened on the way to Google News:

The headline was not the one ABC put on the post — but that’s not how everyone saw it.

 

 

 

“Google’s algorithm is a pernicious beast” might be my favorite description of how the code operates. It works so well most of the time, we just assume it never fails. The scarier aspect is how often we might be besieged by covert errors instead of overt ones.

Good for Jake for being on the spot and accessible, even though the engagement probably took a large chunk out of his busy day. But it’s what you have to do when your reputation is on the line.

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Comments

  1. Dave Dix says:

    great piece!
    Hopefully, Gail Collins @ the NY Times will shut up, finally. (Or alternately, start running 50 consecutive pieces on Obama’s dog diet.) http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/politics&id=8625734