Herald Syndication Snoop.
A browser plugin to make reading the NZ Herald easier.
For a couple of years, the New Zealand Herald, a news I visited frequently had started featuring stories syndicated from international tabloids among the national news headlines in a way that was impossible to distinguish from the more relavent news without clicking through to the article. In short, it had become awash with clickbait.
It had become truly frustrating to read the the day's headlines, and from thousands of tweets I knew I wasn't alone in feeling this.
I set out to write a Chrome plugin that:
- indicated when the source of a story was an international tabloid
- was unobtrusive and subtle in doing so
- didn't otherwise deprive the publisher of ad revenue - I didn't want to write and ad-blocker
This turned out to be fairly easy. Each article page usually included the syndication source either as a byline or by naming it in the final paragraph. The plugin downloads the article pages in the background and applies customisable tagging to the front page headline.
The situation improved somewhat when the Herald redesigned their site in 2017, adding the section name to the front page slug. While this still doesn't indicate the article source, one can now at least tell local news from international stories.
Available on the Chrome store