One of the greatest things about the Internet is that space is not limited. This leads to a much greater ability for individuals and institutions to be able to respond to something someone published about them. In recent weeks there have been two important additions to “right of response” capabilities. Google news has instituted a fairly restrictive way to respond to news articles. You have to go through their verification process, which means there will be some moderation involved. This is particularly useful for politicians, corporations and other entities in the news. News.com has a good piece on how this works, along with screen grabs.

The second new “right to respond” feature comes from the LAT. They call it Blowback and I didn’t even realize it existed, until Uncle Jay got a piece posted in it yesterday. They let anyone write a 700 word response to any article, op-ed or editorial. Their emphasis is naturally on the op-ed side of things, however it will be particularly useful here in California for those of us working in politics. There is still a lot of cache in having something published under the banner of the LA Times, especially for those power-brokers who don’t quite yet get the blogosphere. Perhaps I will experiment the next time I see something that gets me fired up. It will be interesting to see how different the response is from a regular blog post. I am sure the comments will be rather different. Who knows how much traffic any of these will actually get. In peeking through the archive, it appears that most of the responses are from the grasstops, not the grassroots. It makes me wonder if that is a function of the lack of awareness of this as a feature, or if they are clamping down on what they actually publish.

Overall, I think this is an excellent move for the LAT. There is not a lot of cost to them to do this and it should help increase traffic due to the interactive nature of it. Now, if only they would make the comments section more legible.