Google News an exclusive club

Google News isn't very broad-minded, according to a new study.

Online-publishing consultancy Digital Deliverance recently analyzed sources used by the popular news aggregation site and found that a handful of publications dominate coverage, including the official newspapers published by the U.S. and Chinese governments.

"From more than 7,000 sources, is it possible that 48 percent of stories should be coming from only five sources?" Digital Deliverance asks. "Or that Xinhua and the Voice of America, official news sources respectively of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, are the third and fourth most prevalent sources of Google News? All that doesn't seem plausible, but the data shows that is how Google News is operating."

(Full disclosure: Google News is quite possibly a major reason that News.com Extra exists.)