How news are made. Working on my spare time at making the GNOME Summaries I often think that what I do is simplistic compared to ‘real’ journalism. Today I got a reminder that a lot of professional journalism work
on the same simple level I do. By reading mail logs, blogs and so on. Sadly enough professional journalists often works on a even simpler and very low quality way also.

I saw a article in Norways largest paper about Ian McKellen being interested in doing the hobbit. The story in the norwegian paper gave credit to Ananova(.com) for the story.
Going to Ananova I saw they refered to Ian McKellens own homepage as their source. Going to his website and looking around I found that the statements he was quoted on was not an ‘official statement’ as such it was just a reponse he posted to a fanmail. Of course Ananova had rewritten his statements to make them seem like they where made to them or made to the public as an announcement. And of course the meanings had been slightly altered compared to the original message in the posted mail. And of course the norwegian paper reporting on Anananova’s story had slightly altered the story compared to Ananova again. So what the Norwegian papers claim of what he did say wasn’t really accurate anymore as theirs was a rewrite of a rewrite.

So that is how ‘real’ journalism work :)