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Old News Is Not Good News

You may have seen the news that United Airlines stock plummeted when a Web site resurrected an old Chicago Tribune article about United's 2002 bankruptcy filing. Google News indexed this "new" story; a reporter found and reposted it as if it happened that day.

The Google News Blog has its side of the story, and explains how Google could manage to think that an old story could be new again. I have to say, their facts look pretty convincing. Googlebot is no doubt very smart at determining when content is new, but there aren't a lot of hints on the page to tell a computer this story came from the distant past.

The Washington Post story pointed out the critical event that led to United's plunge:

The bizarre chain of events began yesterday, when a reporter at Income Securities Advisors -- a Miami area investment service that disseminates news about distressed companies -- typed in Google search: "bankruptcy 2008."

That search led to the old Tribune article, which the reporter reposted to the Bloomberg Professional subscription service. (How much does that service cost? They don't say on their Web site, that's how expensive.)

Hold on a minute! The whole reason to keep a person in the loop is to apply the kind of reasoning that an automated news-bot like Google's can't ever hope to use. The Post generously referred to this incident's errant person as a "reporter," but I think that's an insult to most reporters. This person had the job of searching for bankruptcy news. Is it unreasonable they should know some basic details about United Airlines, a major company that emerged from its real bankruptcy in 2006? If I was a customer of Bloomberg Professional, I would be extremely upset about the quality of the information I was buying.

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