The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is allowing newsmakers to comment on stories that appear in Google News.

Google says it allows people who are quoted in articles or affiliated with organizations in them to comment, as well as reporters and editors responsible for the stories.

Google will be authenticating the identities of those responding.

For this story about kids preferring food in McDonald’s packaging over identical unbranded food, there is a comment from a flack from McDonald’s and a professor of pediatrics. (You can also read my analysis of the McDonald’s packaging story.) I think it adds a valuable dimension that the reporting of the original stories lacked.

It’s another step in the path to making news an ongoing conversation instead of just a one-shot push to the reader/viewer.

I haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet, but I definitely will.

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