Earlier today in his blog, Centre Daily Times editor Bob Heisse approvingly quoted from one of my posts on the football team being put up overnight at Toftrees before home football games.
While I'm on the topic of links and the CDT, there's something I've been meaning to write about for awhile now:permalinks. If the CDT is serious about its online presence then they should, at the very least, give bloggers permalinks to their articles. Even the blogs at the CDT are full of dead links to CDT stories which diminish the value of those posts. It should be good economics. Giving bloggers permalinks should generate more traffic to the newspapers Web site which should help it sell more advertizing. Even better, the CDT should open up its archives on which it could then sell advertizing.
Com'on "Bob wha'da ya say?
Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, Bob Heisse, hyperlinks
Have to say I laughed out loud when I read the post below by one of our anonymous bloggers (Veblen) in town.Bob should take note of what I did here. I linked to his blog post. He should have done the same with mine. [Update 2/6/09: I checked Bob's blog a few moments ago and found that he's put in a link to the post. Thanks, Bob.]
I'll give credit where it's due: He's so right and I wish I would have come up with this line.
Here's what he wrote, after having been burned by posting a perceived "negative" comment about Penn State football on our Web site:
" ... just a warning, making any comment at the CDT that can be construed as the least bit negative to Penn State football is the cyberspace equivalent of walking in a Penn State frat in an Ohio State sweatshirt."
While I'm on the topic of links and the CDT, there's something I've been meaning to write about for awhile now:permalinks. If the CDT is serious about its online presence then they should, at the very least, give bloggers permalinks to their articles. Even the blogs at the CDT are full of dead links to CDT stories which diminish the value of those posts. It should be good economics. Giving bloggers permalinks should generate more traffic to the newspapers Web site which should help it sell more advertizing. Even better, the CDT should open up its archives on which it could then sell advertizing.
Com'on "Bob wha'da ya say?
Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, Bob Heisse, hyperlinks
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2 comments:
(For the record I'm speaking here generally about the news industry, not about Bob or the CDT)
Our slowness to come around to the wisdom of the link has been, well, embarrassing. The good news, though, is that most places are catching on. There had been queasiness about it at my paper for a long time, but we're really starting to get better at it. I don't think it'll be too long before this is a dead issue, like whether or not newspapers should be blogging used to be. They're all doing it now.
Dan, thanks for your prospective on this.
I'm curious, do you know about any research on the economics of newspapers providing permalinks to their articles and open archives? It seems to me that both would drive traffic to their sites and increase their online ad revenue.
In my own experience, there have been manyh times I will link to the Collegian , which has permalinks and an open archive, rather than the CDT which has neither, when both have articles on the same topic. I'm sure I'm not alone in this practice which deprives the CDT of traffic coming from blogs.
The downside for being blog friendly would be loss of revenue from reselling individual articles and archive access, but how much money can a paper like the CDT make that way? I can't imagine it would be much.
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