Many newspaper Web sites just don’t get it. The Washington Post, for example.
Notice I just gave you the chance to leave this site and look at the Post’s, using a simple hyperlink. Of course, you think, anyone reading online expects that. Anyone except the WaPo editors and their counterparts on most newspaper Web sites.
Take yesterday’s Post article about homeless veterans in Washington, D.C. The article is related to an AP article in the Post, based on the release of a report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. I just linked to an entry point for the source report; I could have linked to the home page of the Alliance, or both. The Post? No links at all.
Click on the “Related Material” box at the foot of each page and you get long lists which include the AP article and the Alliance home page. Do Post editors think pixels are paper and Web sites are linear?
What does the DC Vets article link to? Common terms like Iraq, Afghanistan, Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Fannie Mae link to lists of irrelevant Post articles. The given name of a man named Israel links to articles on the nation-state of that name; a reference to a specific Gallop Poll lists Post articles on the Gallup organization. This linking process may be automated; it is certainly infuriating.
Why aren’t relevant hyperlinks included? Do WaPo editors fear readers will leave their site and not return? That is the chance you take writing for the Web. But that is why many readers prefer to read on the Web, the opportunity to compare varied accounts and explore aspects of the story that capture their attention or imagination.
It doubly insults readers to omit relevant hyperlinks yet include spurious ones. It drives readers to search out original sources themselves, and guarantees they won’t be back, for this story and perhaps not for tomorrow’s, either.
August 11, 2008 at 9:20 pm
[...] use of hypertext, insisting that each newspaper constitute a closed, self-referential system, with hyperlinks only to itself. What infuriating [...]