Joho the Blog
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August 01, 2006
A cool whiff of reality has apparently blown through the Washington Post offices. They announced yesterday that they're going to start including links to other sources in their online articles, even to competitors. That's great. It brings real value to their pages, value that users otherwise will seek elsewhere. So, hats off to the WaPo. Long term, though, I wonder if we're going to look to the newspapers, third parties, or one another as our aggregators. In any case, we're going to want newspapers to recognize that their stories, no matter how good they are, gain yet more value when they come with links that point us to more and more and more and more information. The Boston Globe is running a terrific series on how collection agencies run justice into the ground...and how our justice system doesn't give a crap. It's the type of article that newspapers pride themselves on, as they should. But as I read it and appreciate it, it doesn't seem like an insupperable argument for newspapers. [Tags: media boston_globe washington_post everything_is_miscellaneous] Posted
by D. Weinberger at August 1, 2006 12:52 PM
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Comments
Oh how I hope this is the sign that the days of web news articles that don't actually link to any of the subjects they write about is over! How many hundreds of times have I in frustration had to google an organization name in the middle of reading an article about them.
Posted by: scott | August 1, 2006 01:13 PM
News media were paranoid about competition before they entered the web, and their practices reflect that. It's like they're trying to win the horserace, but shoot the nag first to make sure it won't bite.
"Insupperable": No prob for those who only read papers at breakfast. ;)
Posted by: tom matrullo | August 2, 2006 01:36 PM
Maybe their purchase of Slate, which is good at linking whatever its other flaws, showed them how much linking can enrich a reader's understanding of a story.
Posted by: William McGeveran | August 3, 2006 02:32 PM