Well, if I may be a bit abstract for a moment: Depending on the news story, you and I are actually mentioned in the news a lot more than we think. For example, think about the following stories/headlines: “President Bush lowers taxes for the American people” or “Oil near $97/barrel due to Bhutto Assassination: Citizens Saddened, Consumers Angry” or “Amazon to sell Warner music sans DRM”.

Well, guess what? I am one of those American people. So I was mentioned in the tax story. Do I have the right to comment in that story? And I am also both a saddened citizen as well as a concerned consumer. So there I am, mentioned again in the second, Bhutto story. Ah, once again: I buy music. Thus if the Amazon story talks about “music purchasers” or “music consumers”, that story again mentions me. Not by name, but it does mention me. I am one of those vast faceless consumers discussed/affected/mentioned in the story.

Can I then comment about it in Google news? It seems not. So this only supports your position further, John. Google isn’t building community. No community of taxpayers. No community of Bhutto grievers, no community of music listeners. And yet the stories mention all of us.

Most political news makers and business VIPs are too busy and have support PR staff or counsel who allocate their official responses to news media outlets – including an occasional letter to the New York Times or Washington Post.

Most defendants, Attorneys or Prosecutors are very careful what they statements release during a trial and might call a press conference during a high profile event to reach the maximum outlets – there is no need for them to further comment on Google news.

Those that have commented in Google news are mostly Academics who are commenting for PR purposes.

But what would be the motivation for the rest, when there are so many more productive options available for the really important news makers?

For example let Britney Spears have her Google account authenticated easilly through a micro credit card payment process (where Google employees can verify her identity since you hardly can fake a credit card payment identity) or some other ways for Google to verify the identity and validity of “representation of person or company” of a Google account. Cause once a Google account identity is verified, then that account can comment and do stuff instantly without going through any further verifications process.

Google idea is fantastic. Your analysis does not hold in the situation. If getting a big community is their goal then it is not difficult. Just open comments to everybody just like your blog has.

Here is how you can test your hypothesis with your blog:

For one month open commenting only to the subjects in your blog posts. For an example on this post, only Googlers related to Google News could comment. And see if you could get as much success as Google News. If not then you have something to learn from them instead of the other way around.

Take a look at the googlenews faq, please, and report later…