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The Post-Holiday Dip

Missing links and old media in new formats

I was heartened to see the debate about media's missing links over at Wordblog. The lack of links in newspaper articles is something that annoys me constantly, especially in stories based on statistics, where I find myself wondering what the sample was or if they were measuring the right variables when I come across stories where I can't quite make the conclusions add up.

I love newssites that provide links in their stories. So much so that I can't really get my head around why any newspaper would want to provide Pdf versions of the paper, what's the use of that? That's just printable newspapers right, or am I missing something? For one it takes away the smell and feel of newspapers, and why would I take the time to print a Pdf paper when I read online papers for the speediness, to get a quick overview of what's happening in the world?

I'd much rather get my printed newspaper in a shop or on my doorstep, to be enjoyed over a cup of coffee when time allows, and skim constantly updated news online, preferably with links to sources and relevant sites. Vampus provides a good perspective on it here (in Norwegian). The dilemma of whether to link or not reminds me of the recent US media debate about the subject, where, to my mind, Washington Post landed on some good conclusions:

According to Jim Brady, the executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, reporters or Web producers can insert links to another paper’s site when they see fit. “We think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Brady said. “It seems limiting to tell people about something another news organization has reported and not point them to it. It goes against the Web’s DNA.” (quote via this article in The New York Times). Not only does The Washington Post encourage links, from September/October on they will also provide links to stories on the same subject in competing newspapers next to their own articles (see the before mentioned NYT article).

Comments

I`d be happy just to know how to add links to my left side column...

Sorry, can't help you there. I don't know how to do that in Blogger (this is a Typepad blog, and here it's done via typelists, but in Blogger I believe you have to know the html code - I'm on foreign territory here though so don't quote me on it).

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