I remain an optimist that newspapers aren’t dying. But if they die, the cause of death will be suicide, not that the evil Internet killed them.
Hyperlinks are not a matter of life or death, even in the digital age. But failure to adapt can kill your business, or an entire industry, and hyperlinks are a key illustration of newspapers’ failure and unwillingness to adapt.
Shan Wang of the Nieman Lab addressed the issue of linking in a post yesterday (I did too; we were both responding to a post on linking by Margaret Sullivan, New York Times Public Editor).
This passage from Wang’s post was a facepalm moment for me that just illustrates how slow, reluctant and stupid newspapers have been in adapting to the challenges and opportunities of digital media:
For professional newsrooms, settling on the “right” standards for linking out can be a bit of a tug-of-war between the culture of web-based writing (which strongly encourages it), a news site’s desire to keep reader traffic within its site, and in some cases the constraints of a janky CMS.
Wang cited a 2013 study of linking by Mark Coddington that found “that clunky content management systems built primarily to produce a print newspaper were also a hindrance to adopting more widespread linking practices.”
I hardly know where to start in this smorgasbord of stubbornness and stupidity, so I’ll take the points in order:
Culture
The reasons to link are not just a “culture of web-based writing.” Repeating what I wrote more than three years ago, linking is good business for two important reasons:
- Links help search engines help people find your work.
- Links help interested people find your work.
Go to the link above for elaboration, but as long as your financial success is based even a little bit on digital traffic, you have two much better reasons than culture to link.
The same post also gave four reasons that linking is good journalism (we still care about that, right?):
- Honesty
- Transparency
- Attribution
- Context
Again, read the old post for details or read yesterday’s for an explanation of why linking is a matter of journalism ethics. This is not about culture, people. It’s about good business, good journalism and journalism ethics. If you don’t care about those things, go find something else to read, because that’s what I blog about.
(Pausing to take a deep breath and calm down. A little.)
Keeping traffic on your site
” … a news site’s desire to keep reader traffic within its site.” Look, I’m no analytics expert. But every news site in the business has data showing that most of your visitors spend about 15 seconds on your site anyway. It’s not links that are sending them away. It’s boring content, busy lives and backward thinking (like refusing to link to relevant sources).
Yes, it was great when people would browse the morning newspaper over coffee for 20 minutes or more or spend an hour or so with the Sunday paper. But even then they read other things: books, magazines, other newspapers, newsletters, billboards. They watched TV. You can’t control people’s eyeballs. Your market is people who like to read. And people who like to read like multiple sources of reading material.
The backward keep-them-on-the-site thinking still shockingly prevails in too many newsrooms. The only way to keep them on your site is to provide compelling content. Even then, they’re going to leave your site. Give them a reason to come back.
Content management systems
“… the constraints of janky … clunky content management systems built primarily to produce a print newspaper.”
(More deep breaths.)
Businesses choose technology to meet their priorities. Newspapers have janky, clunky, outdated, print-first CMS’s because they have janky, clunky, outdated, print-first businesses. They would have good digital-first tools if they made it a priority. How many newspaper companies that still use janky, clunky CMS’s built new multimillion-dollar presses since we already could see that this digital thing was going to be kinda big? I worked for two and know of more.
But a janky, clunky CMS is no excuse for failing to link. You can add links in any CMS that I know of. It may take a few more minutes, but we take a few more minutes to do the other tasks of good journalism: verifying facts, writing good leads, cultivating sources, contacting people for response if a story will criticize them. Can you imagine accepting weak excuses for failing to do any of those things?
The hyperlink is more than 20 years old. Newspapers have been declining for 10 years, if not more. It’s way past time to stop making excuses and figure out the link, newspapers.
Twitter discussion
Update: I meant to include these tweets about the discussion, responding to my tweet about the Nieman post and to this post itself:
@stevebuttry @NiemanLab It is soooo frustrating when there are no links. I don’t mind working 2 find them, but really?
— Susie Cambria (@susiecambria) July 23, 2015
@stevebuttry Some of us who come out of the blogworld have learned to be very careful abt linking. Cultural difference! @NiemanLab @nytimes
— Cheryl Rofer (@cherylrofer) July 23, 2015
LINK STRATEGIES: Include hyperlinks when relevant https://t.co/OZwYM1zxjc cc: @stevebuttry
— Christoph Trappe (@CTrappe) July 23, 2015
@stevebuttry @shansquared @NiemanLab Link when it’s relevant to the audience: http://t.co/ZV185XJtrT
— Christoph Trappe (@CTrappe) July 23, 2015
Earlier posts on linking
Journalists need to use links to show our work
Requiring links to sources can keep you from falling for pranks
Linking at the New York Times: encouraged but inconsistent
New York Times exhorts staff to link more and better in stories
New Guiding Principles for Journalists a big step forward (but they neglect linking)
Aggregation guidelines: Link, attribute, add value
4 reasons why linking is good journalism; 2 reasons why linking is good business
I remember this being a hot topic at your SPJ/RTDNA presentation last year in Nashville. It’s unfortunate that there’s still resistance to open linking.
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Wow. Great comments in the Times piece:
– Google it if you must
– It was prepared on deadline
It’s really not rocket science. Link when it helps the audience:
http://authenticstorytelling.net/link-strategies-include-hyperlinks-relevant/#sthash.1ctxogqF.dpbs
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Seriously, what are these CMSes that supposedly make linking to something else difficult? That’s quite a shortcoming.
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As it happens, I was reading Greensboro.com, my former employer’s site, this morning, and I saw a link in the body of a story to the source, a story on the Charlotte Observer’s site. That’s the first time I can recall seeing such a link to an *outside* source in an N&R/Greensboro.com story. There may have been some, but if so, I didn’t see them or don’t recall them.
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On a positive note, my local media company has linked to my blog before when that was the only place where a specific piece of content could be found.
So, it’s not all bad. 🙂
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Can I claim credit, Lex? I think I will.
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Reblogged this on mediamechanics.
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I feel your pain, having long observed that digital news sites just can’t get it into their head that linking out is a good thing for their readers.
And this seemingly institutional mental block is in part related to the fact that journalists have long regarded hyperlinks as being chiefly about source attribution, rather than about providing additional frames of reference for readers, or even just good web practice (and hence the startling frequency with which one still sees today a web address in a news story – sometimes even when a website IS the story – used without linking it).
Though this doubtlessly does have something to do with the fear of losing traffic to those links. Interesting to note that back in 2010 the BBC announced an initiative to increase (indeed, double) the amount of outbound links for their stories (http://bbc.in/1Jk0Boe). So perhaps this reticence to link is to a degree confined to commercial, rather than public, digital news organizations: it would be interesting to compare and contrast.
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Thanks for your comment, Aaron.
I’ll bet increasing the number of outbound links actually increases inbound traffic, too. It provides a better user experience (making people more likely to return). And it boosts your Googlejuice.
I disagree, though, about journalist regarding hyperlinks as source attribution. If they did, I think they’d use them for source attribution and I’ve noted how inconsistently they do that, both in Tuesday’s post and in a post last November (again picking on the Times).
I think the people making bad decisions for newspapers (or failing to make good ones) do regard links as good web practice (they don’t care, see them as an unnecessary digital frill) or a courtesy to readers (they should care, but don’t; note the Times Book Editor’s quote I referenced in Tuesday’s post, dismissing links as “added benefit” (but not, apparently, a benefit she cared about providing to the Times’ paying subscribers). And some see them as a matter of courtesy to the source (they especially don’t care and don’t want to send traffic to the competition). Hell, I’ve even read journalists whining that the different look of the hyperlink is distracting in the typography (as though we haven’t had 20 years to get used to reading that way).
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Just noted in your Twitter profile, Aaron, that you work in SEO. I’m right, aren’t I, about outbound links helping your Googlejuice?
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