Searching for Virginia Tech

Is this ethical?

If you Googled "Virginia Tech shooting" or "Virginia shooting" this week, the Internet search engine served up dozens of links to news about the university massacre. Yet some media outlets weren't taking the chance of missing readers' attention by being bumped down the list.

The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, bought keyword ads that put their coverage into the prominent "sponsored links" atop the Google results page. So did The First Post, a British online news magazine. The Times, CNN and Fox News got similar links up on Yahoo; Fox News also mined MSN.

Buying keyword ads to run alongside search engine results is a well-established practice. All kinds of companies, in and out of the media, do it when sporting events or TV shows turn something into a hot topic.

But for top-tier news organizations to advertise their Virginia Tech coverage this way illuminates the massive power the Web now wields in the traditional media. No longer can the Times or the Post assume that readers would naturally come to them, even when a huge event breaks.

Read more here (from Yahoo! News).