NYT Links Out On Homepage

The New York Times has launched an alternative homepage which features links to headline stories on other websites.

Currently in beta, Times Extra uses the newspaper’s own news aggregator (BlogRunner) to provide visitors with links to coverage of lead articles on news websites and blogs elsewhere.



For example, a main story about Caroline Kennedy entering New York politics featured a range of links on the homepage to coverage of the same story on third-party sites including The Hill’s Pundits Blog, ABC News, the conservative blog Crunchy Con and the New York Daily News.



Visitors to the homepage can activate the aggregation feature by clicking the Times Extra button and can revert back to the traditional main page by clicking it again.

“The days when content sites were afraid to link to other sites are over,” commented Marc Frons, chief technology officer for digital operations with The New York Times Company.

In a press release, he added: “Times Extra is an important part of our strategy to become a destination for compelling journalism, not only by The New York Times, but by other content providers as well.

“We want to give our readers a comprehensive view of the news and opinion our editors think is important.”

[HT - Editor & Publisher.]