Online Newspapers & Missing Links

Newspaper websites are not engaging fully with the Web’s link culture, according to a digital director at Johns Hopkins University.

Tim Windsor believes that link journalism is not “taking root” in newsrooms and is proving a source of frustration to readers.

The Web strategy chief also asserts that not deploying links to third-party content means losing “an easy SEO opportunity”.

Writing on Nieman Journalism Lab, he notes that links can be found in blogs written by journalists but are still a rare sight within news articles.

“Reporters blog. Reporters podcast. Reporters build mashups, tweet, create tumblogs, shoot video, host meetups. Everything but link,” says Windsor.

“Whatever the reason, the missing link has to stop being a hallmark of newspaper-related sites.”

If you want to know more, check out the blog post’s comments where the issues behind non-linking are discussed by Windsor, bloggers and journalists.

And if you want to know how good / bad you are with links, Malcolm Coles has published a linking scale on the Online Journalism Blog.

[HT - Martin Stabe]