news datelines in this wired world

[Deviant Ollam]

here's just a quick blip on my mental radar screen that perhaps many in this community might share with me...

do you think that in this world which is being "shrunk" more and more by advances in communication, a world in which information is becoming more global than ever before, we will soon see news organizations adopting a more detailed format for the dateline in their stories?

to those who don't know, the "dateline" of a news piece is the not just the date it was filed, but (more important for what i'm talking about here) the location from where the news is originating. thus, in an article like this...

HOLLYWOOD—Pretentious retards just can't get enough of the Prius hybrid. The hottest selling model by Toyota, the Prius has taken the cappucino crowd by storm with a blah blah blah oil blah blah blah mileage blah blah cost blah blah expensive sunglasses blah blah blah actors, agents, and lawyers blah blah blah smog blah blah blah 45 MPG, 60 HP blah blah blah

... "hollywood" would be the dateline. which is all well and good for most people in the country and the world at large, since it happens to be a well-known place. however, with more and more news (even from second-rate and third-rate "local news" organizations) being posted online... and with international press being linked to by people on bulletin boards, blogs, and in IRC channels... we're starting to see news stories which are widely-read but have datelines like "Springville" (which could be any one of a dozen cities anywhere in the country) or "Kyrksæterøra" (which people realize is a city nowhere in this country... but can't figure out much more than that)

i'll often be given a link, read the story, be interested in where it's happening, and then have to try to check the main page of whatever web site is hosting it in order to determine the organization's parent city, state, country, etc.

would it be too much to ask for news wire services to start formatting their dateline like this...

NEWARK, OHIO, USA—Absolutely nothing fucking happened here today because our city is in the middle of the cow-intensive nowhere that is central Ohio. Yes, we share the same name as the largest city in New Jersey which is known for its crime and the city in Delaware known as "the one besides Wilmington" but we are, in fact, 400 miles from each of them.

ok, rant over. i imagine we'll eventually see this change made. i just wish it would happen faster.

[Samurai Drifter]

I know the feeling. Oh the adventures I've had, doing search after search for cities that I have no clue where they are. Often you can tell by the name, thogh. For instance, Furherzwigen would almost definitely be in Germany,and Kyrksæterøra sounds like it would be Russian (judging by the o with the line through it;hey, alot of thought went into that). But there are some that just don't seem to have any clear origin.

That would be a nice journalistic advancement.

[Deviant Ollam]

Kyrksæterøra sounds like it would be Russian

Heh, actually it's a city in Norway in the county of South Trøndelag, way out west on a bay of the Norwegian Sea behind the island of Hitra.

[TheCotMan]

How far away from Istanbul is Constantinople?
How far away is New York, NY from New Amsterdam, NY?
And, one more thing, is Dublin in California, Ohio, Indiana, or Ireland?

I think dateline should include: City, County, State, Country, Date, time and Timezone using 3 letter designation.

When articles are clipped from newspapers, the date is missing.
When some articles make it online, the day is omitted, and you are lucky to even find a year.

Lack of a date to news stories has caused spam floods as well-meaning people see an email (without a date) and think the issue is current and tell their friends.

Lack of specifics for fact checking and source validation helps to make urban legends prosper.

[renderman]

How far away from Istanbul is Constantinople?
How far away is New York, NY from New Amsterdam, NY?
And, one more thing, is Dublin in California, Ohio, Indiana, or Ireland?

I think dateline should include: City, County, State, Country, Date, time and Timezone using 3 letter designation.

When articles are clipped from newspapers, the date is missing.
When some articles make it online, the day is omitted, and you are lucky to even find a year.

Lack of a date to news stories has caused spam floods as well-meaning people see an email (without a date) and think the issue is current and tell their friends.

Lack of specifics for fact checking and source validation helps to make urban legends prosper.

1. Same place (Hear: They Might be giants song)
2. Sam place (Hear: same song as above)
3. Dublin is wherever the guiness I'm consuming is from. I don't care.

The worst offender I've come across is /. which has no year designation on it's stories leaving people wondering when the hell it was posted.

I'm in agreement with TheCotMan. For future generations researching archives, it make sense to incluse all that information. as things like timezone can be important to track the flow of information around the world/web and potentially very revealing.

Just my drunken $0.02

[Samurai Drifter]

Heh, actually it's a city in Norway in the county of South Trøndelag, way out west on a bay of the Norwegian Sea behind the island of Hitra.

Well, there you go. Yet another reason extended datelines are a good idea.

[Floydr47]

Lack of specifics for fact checking and source validation helps to make urban legends prosper.

....and what exactly is wrong with making urban legends prosper? I have spent many wonderful hours eating "Fizz-Pops" (Pop-Rocks for y'all that ain't from Texas), and drinking carbonated beverages just to see if my head really would explode...

(/me makes mental note...get a life soon.)

[erehwon]

I think dateline should include: City, County, State, Country, Date, time and Timezone using 3 letter designation.

When articles are clipped from newspapers, the date is missing.
When some articles make it online, the day is omitted, and you are lucky to even find a year.

Lack of a date to news stories has caused spam floods as well-meaning people see an email (without a date) and think the issue is current and tell their friends.

Lack of specifics for fact checking and source validation helps to make urban legends prosper.

Just so you guys know, I strive to make sure whatever funky security news there is out there, has a link with all the original datelines, author, etc.

Nothing makes my day more than seeing a story on some goofball Google adsense site, and later finding the real one thanks to Google News, then and only submitting it to InfoSec News.

[cycom]

Perhaps we should start our own news agency and use a new standard similar to the forums: You have an avatar of the anchor (already in many newspapers, usually the goofiest fucking picture possible of them), The date in which they began to spew the news, but instead of the post date, the date/time in which the event occured, or perhaps 'how long ago' it occured, like the comcast website does. You could even know how many stories they've submitted and stuff like that, along with a short bio of the reporter in their profile, and their AIM screen name so those folks in Alabama can spew hate mail/messages/etc. to the guy that wrote this article about the ten commandments in front of the court house. My favorite is the part about how the judge put them there in the middle of the night two years ago.

Seriously though, that article has a pretty cool format, as does most of the site, even if the content is not my particular taste (I'm not interested in religion enough). The datelines are ok, containing the country of origin, with specific states/city in the first line or three of the article. That seems to make it pretty easy to figure out where it happened. I especially like the url of that article being at the bottom of the page with a link to babelfish to translate it into other languages and a rating system. They also make sure to include credit for the article to it's originating news agency, which is a good thing to do when you are not the original author of an article. It kinda saves you from getting sued into oblivion. The site also has some nice links on the side that let you find region-specific news, which are followed by the articles (there aren't many) sorted by year, and each month of this year on top of those. Neat.