Tennessee politicians, heed. From now on, when a reporter writes a scathing story of you, you can respond… what you always wanted.

That’s right. Google News now gives you the functionality to be able to send a comment to a story that will appear in coordination with that story. This is great. It allows you to present your side of the story. I see this as being an added and important task for campaigns, in particular. If this functionality “sticks”, I think that it will become increasingly important for campaigns to respond to a press release or Google News story, as quickly as possible. Campaigns will be pressured to respond quickly before a press release that hits Google News becomes a story in the local paper - to enable the campaign to get “its own” message out.

Although, I do feel sorry for the legions of staffers who will have to “man the Google News wires” all night long, to make sure that a press release gets responded to and the comment gets included - before the story is circulated further.

I think that their motto should be:

“Google - Adding Greater Complexity to an Already Complex World”.