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For the love of all that is hyper, stop with the misleading links!

February 18, 2013 in Back to Basics, General Media, Websites

Time once again for one of my pet peeves. In fact, it’s not so much a pet peeve as something that summons my rage to levels no mere listicle can, and especially when an online-only outlet does it. I’m writing, of course, about the profound inability of some web sites to actually do a hyperlink properly.

I’ve written about this again and again and again and again, and until outlets start writing links like they understand what the World Wide Web is for, I’ll keep on raging about it. So here’s today’s villain: Engadget.

Exhibit A:

As you can tell from reading, this is a story about an app called Fleksy. You will note in the first paragraph (#1) that Engadget refers to the company and the app, and the words are underlined to link to other content. Below that (#2), the article refers to an Android version of this particular app.

A savvy veteran of the World Wide Web, or even a rank noob who’d spent more than a day with a browser, would think those links would point you to, I don’t know, the app company’s web site (in the case of #1) or the web page for the Android version (in the case of #2).

But you, dear WWW browser, would be WRONG. Both of those links lead to other Engadget stories about the Flexsy App! In fact, if you want to find the actual Flexsy App link, you have to read down to the bottom of the article, where it’s buried as “sources.” (#3)

If you’re going to do this, just don’t put links in your articles. Put the sources at the bottom of the page and be done with it. Turn off your automated internal linking widget and stop perverting the idea of the hyperlink. If you want to link to an archive of your previous articles, do so in a parenthetical, like this: (previous coverage).

And, as usual, Engadget isn’t unique in this aberrant Web behavior. They are just the one that crossed my path this weekend.

I do realize that one of the largest sites, Wikipedia, does not follow this convention, but Wiki inline links serve a different function. If you click on a wiki link, you are taken to another page with an encyclopedia entry related to the word/phrase you clicked on. There’s no automated collection of articles from the past there. The inline links on most news web sites are just callous attempts to keep you on site.

And just so you know, with the exception of specific references to CICM archives, every one of those links above function as they should – taking you to the source.

Lesson for the day: If you’re going to make a brand name or a business or a government agency name into a link in your story, make it a link to the web site of the brand, business or government agency. It’s not your property, stop using it like it is.

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BackToBasics: Linking

August 16, 2012 in Back to Basics

Editor’s note: As a new school year ramps up, I’m starting a series of posts highlighting some basic online journalism practices that reporters and editors should be adopting. This is the first in the series.

The most fundamental “thing” that makes the web what it is is not video, audio, fancy responsive design, or animated gifs. It’s the hyperlink. The hyperlink is what ties the web together. And yet this most basic element is something that news media have struggled with since the web was invented way back in the 1990s. They still struggle with it today.

So here are some basics of linking adapted from a presentation I gave to student journalists of the Daily Eastern News during staff training this week.

What is a link?

A hyperlink is a highlighted text in a web document that takes the user to another page or document located somewhere on the Internet. Links are frequently (although not always) denoted by blue underlined text, like this (not a link). What makes a link a link is a bit of HTML code behind those words.

Why do you link?

As a journalist on the web, there are several reasons why you should link to other web pages in your online stories. The most basic reason is this: You’re writing for the web, on the web. This is not paper. It’s a different medium.

Other reasons:

  • Continuity – Rarely does an issue or event arise ex nihilo. Chances are great that this issue or event has been covered before, in some detail, in your publication. Your online readers will benefit from easy access to some of the previous coverage of similar topics within your publication.
  • Context – As stories don’t arise from nothing, they also don’t occur in a vacuum. Linking allows a reporter to show what others are saying about the issue without adding meaningless additional verbiage to the story.
  • Credibility – Linking is a more advanced form of citing your sources. As an example, you can say “The university increased the budget by 3 percent” and actually provide readers with a place to find the source for that figure. Any time you are citing a document (a government report, budget, memo, tweet, press release, etc.), linking to a version of the actual document adds to your credibility. Theoretically, linking to these source documents will also help you avoid misquoting, mischaracterizing, or misconstruing these documents.
  • Community – In most communities, the newspaper isn’t the only source of information. When you read about something happening via someone’s Facebook page or blog or Twitter status, it’s the neighborly thing to do to mention where you got that information. There have been far too many instances where “real” journalists have lifted story ideas and stories from bloggers and community members without giving any credit to those sources. This builds bad blood with your audience. Nobody expects you to find out everything yourself. Share the credit when it’s deserved.

What should you link?

  • Past articles from your own web site
  • Government documents ( or any source source documents)
  • Web sites for artists, musicians, etc.
  • Explanatory background about hard to understand or obscure topics (science, economics, arts movements, etc.)
  • Similar articles around the web (other news outlets, blogs that might have broken news)
  • Controversial statements (source documents, like twitter, facebook, etc.)

How do you link?

  • Inline: This is the most familiar to web users. Linking with actual text within the story, so that “These Words” would take you to another page on the web.
  • Parenthetical: Some sites use this format, although it breaks the flow of the sentence a bit more. It is useful especially for non-html documents or files that might take a while to load (think PDFs or mp3s).
  • More info box: This takes links out of the stream of the article and puts them in a box, like an info box on a print story. Again, the problem here is that people on the web are used to ignoring content that isn’t in the flow of the content they’re consuming, so they might never notice your nice box of links.
  • End of article: This is the lazy way of adding links to a story. Copy and paste some URLs at the bottom of the story and add “For more information:” at the top of the list. I mention that it’s lazy, because a writer doesn’t really have to think about *how* the links fit with the rest of the article. But it’s also bad because most people are never going to reach the end of your article.
What you should not do:
I realize there are well-known – even highly respected – journalistic outlets that do this, but it’s bad practice. Don’t EVER link to a company or individual’s name and have that link lead to a collection of articles on your own web site. It’s dishonest linking. As a web user, when I see Google (notice, that’s a link), I expect that if I click on that link, I’m going to be taken to Google’s home page, not your internally computer-generated page of content. That’s the way the web is supposed to work. If you want to link to other articles about a company that your outlet has written, then that’s a good place for a parenthetical. For instance, I’ve written about WordPress numerous times. If I want to link to previous articles, I might write WordPress [link] (previous coverage) [internal link]. It’s not rocket science.

 

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