outbound linking
Published September 23rd, 2002 in publishing + contentWhy don’t major news publications like MSNBC or rather, NewsWeek, include outbound links in their articles?
Take this one, which I just skimmed, In it you’ll find this passage:
And yet my GSM-capable phone didnít work in Asia. I was missing a removable chip called a SIM card. A little bigger than a fingernail, a SIM card identifies you to the local wireless network, telling it youíre an authorized user. Don’t make my mistake. You can buy worldwide SIM cards. Or you can buy country-specific ones. Either way, you need them. Enter “SIM card” in an Internet search engine to find a provider you might like.
See that last sentence? Why doesn’t it link to Google, or better yet for this publisher, MSN’s own search engine?
Wouldn’t this work better for the reader, and for MSN’s own branding:
And yet my GSM-capable phone didnít work in Asia. I was missing a removable chip called a SIM card. A little bigger than a fingernail, a SIM card identifies you to the local wireless network, telling it youíre an authorized user. Don’t make my mistake. You can buy worldwide SIM cards. Or you can buy country-specific ones. Either way, you need them. Search for “SIM card” in your favorite Internet search engine to find a provider you might like.
I mean, really? Isn’t that what the web is all about? Linking to related information so that others can find things more easily?
Look at the next paragraph in that story. There are two websites mentioned, with a url, and no hyperlinks. What’s going on here? Are they just too lazy to do the work? Did they really lay off all the humans behind the website?
I’m picking on MSNBC here, but the New York Times stories are just as bad, as are the Dallas Morning News stories, and even the San Francisco Chronicle (which I’d think would be more web friendly) doesn’t include more than one link in some of its more technology friendly articles.
Sort of pisses me off you know? I mean really? Are they scared to loose readers? Seems like if I found a friendly publisher that allowed me to just click and read other sources, I’d read them more often… maybe that’s why I read weblogs so much more than major publications now … interesting thought.
2 Responses to “outbound linking”
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I have some experience working for one of the major news sites.
They have two primary sources for content:
1) In-house writers, and
2) Feeds.
The in-house writers are the web staff you mentioned, and if you see content with interactive features, either the content, the interactive feature, or both originated with an in-house writer.
In many (most?) cases, the feeds come in from either the news services, or from business partners or corporate cousins, and typically by way of an automated process. At CNN, we also had an automated process to remove Associated Press and Reuters content, since their license for online use only allowed 2 or 3 weeks (I forget which) of availability.
Typically, the feed content comes in as it was provided to other sources (usually newspapers), and most news sites don’t bother to spruce it up unless it’s being published as part of a package with other in-house content. This is partly because that content is more transient — it will only live on the site for 2 or 3 weeks, and it’s more frequently updated as events require.
In the post-dotcom crash era, in-house employees have been laid off, and more and more of the content is provided without human intervention, hence no hyperlinks.
At CNN specifically, they’re trying to get broadcast news staff to produce more web content, rather than paying dedicated web staff, but writers who see the web site as an extra duty piled on an already heavy load are unlikely to go the extra mile to massage their stories for the web.
Thank you, John, for hitting on a huge pet peeve of mine. I’m also irritated by Cnet’s habit of referencing things and linking to a previous News.com story about them, instead of the actual products/companies. Try finding a story on News.com that links outside of News.com.