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By the way, to unmask, I recently was dropped without goodbyes after eight years as a contract reporter with The Washington Post. I am deeply passionate about the news industry on both a political and personal level. I believe it ranks as critical in the hierarchy of pillars of a free society. If I can contribute to the conversation for its betterment, that makes me happy. You have a wonderful forum. I think I would have needed to wear sharper clothing to get the opportunity to pitch in ideas at some of the places I have worked. I am deeply disappointed in the major newspaper organizations of this country because, although blindsided by the rise of the Internet, they squandered their greatest assets — massed content and institutional knowledge — and all too willingly commited suicide. It didn’t help that there was a gleeful, concerted effort on the Right, beginning with Gingrich and continuing on to the loudmouth of Limbaugh and others, to bury the industry under an avalanche of accusation for being the tool of liberals. The polarization of the populace in this country did newspapers no favor, but their corporate, bottom-line abdication of responsibility to cover the damn news — developing pathetic, snarky blogs while pulling the statehouse and zoning meeting reporter — sealed their fate. I hope from the ashes rises something with teeth that resumes the watchdog role. It’s saddening to watch Jon Stewart being held up as the beacon of speaking truth to power. There is a strong drive under way to disperse the coverage of our world to citizen journalists and niche bloggers, where everyone has a say. “Here comes everybody,” though, is my worst nightmare because the layers of vetting, the experienced editing, the institutional knowledge and strength will be missing because we will have broken off into tribes of self-interest rather than pushing with the strength of community for leaders across both political and business spectrums to feel compelled to answer to the people. That community strength was represented in and by newspapers and now it is all but gone. Sure, there are plenty of commentators out there, but the hard work of investigative journalism has lost its champions. It’s a helluva good time to be a crook in America.
Thanks for the dialogue
– John Scheinman

Agreed with the substance of your most recent comment. As I note in the original post, you’re more likely to find unrelated “robolinks” to seemingly random places (actually, just words or phrases that happen to be in the CMS’s autolink database) than actual links to the true content of any particular article.

You can see this today in a prominent Business section article from my local paper:

http://is.gd/nrnv

The article is about three financial-advice web sites. None of them is linked. But you will find baffling robolinks to The New York Times and Portland, Oregon.

The article has a photo embedded, which means a web producer took the time to add it. But nobody thought it would also be a good idea to make links to the subject matter of the story.

Back to your comment, random links are not good journalism. Targeted, relevant links — I’d argue — are.

I hope we’ve found some common ground on that point.

:-)

I believe the better question to ask than “Why won’t news sites link?” is “Is there work any good?”
The premise of this lab is to create a discussion about how to help news organizations navigate and succeed in the online world. I believe, however, we are moving way ahead of ourselves and risking abandoning standards that must be emphasized over and over at the foundation level of the new enterprise, or they will wind up being discarded or forgotten. We must tell the story under the best of journalistic standards, complete with proper editing and fact-checking. The foundation of good journalism must remain good journalism, not the raw extras we can attach. Of course, a link to the Pentagon papers provides utility and value, but a basketball story that links the name of the schools to their home Web sites does not. I have seen news articles on the Web littered, reflexively, with links to nearly everything in the body of the text and they are annoying and leading down paths only tangentially germane to the story. Complaints about the lack of these offers of often superfluous digression strike me as being like reviews I’ve read of DVDs that wonder why the release of such and such great film doesn’t offer a lot of bonus material. Does the interview with the director, the short on the making of, the unused ending, the outtakes, etc., really enhance the experience of, say, “The Godfather”? I’d love to know how old you are and how many hours you spend a day at the desktop and whether you think that is a good thing. Lord knows I’m on here too long. The Internet can feed obsession, compulsion, ADD, and all sorts of those kinds of human mind issues.
Rule Number One may be that people move around, but they will do so whether you provide them links or not within a story. I believe word-based news sites need to redouble their focus on the critical mission especially when forced to — not offered — a new delivery system: First-rate reporting and writing, and, yes, grammar. Links better have a deep connection to the story — like the Pentagon Papers — because otherwise they are just another time suck.

Thanks for commenting, but with all due respect, I think you’ll be much happier staying with print all the way down.

Once a news organization steps onto the web, it has to play by the rules of the web. And Rule Number One is that people move around. Even the proverbial reporter’s mother views more sites than just MySonsNewspaper.com. You can no more “keep readers at your site” than you can convince them that it’s more efficient and fun to model their breathing rhythms on the bass line of “All The Single Ladies.”

And when did source materials become mere “eye candy?” Sure, the magician-in-a-box story linkage would be lightweight, but so too is the story itself. Would you not link to Pentagon documents, or minutes of a City Council meeting or video of the game-winning basket?

I know more than a few reporters who have happily embraced linking in their WordPress-powered blogs, but don’t add links to their CMS-published stories because of what is perceived as a difficult workflow.

one week ago, we published this little posting in our paper’s blog. The Message:
Yes, we DO link (even on our homepage)

http://blogs.badische-zeitung.de/redaktionsblog/2009/03/ja-wir-verlinken-auch-auf-der-startseite/

If you’re blogging and embedding stuff in the blog – then why bother posting the shovelware story? It only confuses the consumer (and the Googlebot).

Do it once. Do it right.

Yes, the technical issues are daunting. So was moving from hot type to front-end systems.

Let’s get it done. Nice post, TW.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/local_magician_i_sent_myself_t.html

Follow-up stories were blogged, with links.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/feds_investigate_claim_of_mans.html

I suspect many papers have such a two-track path: The automatic overnight “dump” from the paper and the link-active blog post. At the Post-Standard, the blog post comes first. The story for the paper goes online later, after making its trip through pagination and typesetting software. Many times I’ve tried to figure out a way to get an active hyperlink to survive the trip through pagination and typesetting. It’s also a lament of ours that stories for the paper go online without their related photos or sidebars.

But we are in the midst of creating that reverse-publishing system that promises to address some of these issues. Also, however, we continue to try to develop surf-savvy and link-savvy editors, reporters and columnist, and our work isn’t done.