Google has just introduced a feature whereby those who are “participants” in a news item pointed to by U.S. Google News may submit a comment on that story. According the Google News Help page [1], “Participants are people mentioned in a story or related to organizations in a story.”
Comments show up in a news search and are marked with a small speech bubble graphic, thus:
Link [2] to the actual comment
The Google News Blog [3], announcing the experiment, says that comments will be published in full and without editing.
Clearly this is going to entail some unautomated work to check the identity [4] of the person who sends in a comment and to judge whether the person is sufficiently connected to the story to warrant the right to comment.
Can you imagine setting up a court website or CanLII or an e-Laws site such that lawyers — or, indeed, members of the public — could comment on legislation or decisions directly? Very messy, but interestingly democratic perhaps.