Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Linking

PDA: Wired UK and inflation in the link economy

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:30:20 +0000

PDA looks at an article in the forthcoming edition of Wired UK from Nick Bilton, a user interface specialist and lead researcher at the New York Times, who has been analysing the growth in linking from newspaper websites’ homepages.

“So we’re showing people online 300 more options on one page than we show them in print. And we wonder why people have information overload of content,” writes Bilton.

Some interesting stats pulled out by PDA on its own site, Guardian.co.uk, which has 1,941 words on its starting page, 350 individual links and 1,222 linked words.

Full post at this link…

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Aggregator NewsNow says publishers seeking court injunction to stop linking

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:18:37 +0000

In an open letter to publishers last week, news aggregator NewsNow claimed its service is under threat following legal pressure from UK newspaper publishers.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk at the time, managing director Struan Bartlett said almost all of those publishers named and regional newspaper group were putting pressure on the site.

Some publishers have demanded compensation for the site’s links to their content rather than a revenue share, he added.

Today Bartlett has published a ‘free linking’ Q&A outlining further details of the site’s deteriorating relationship with newspaper publishers.

In the post, Bartlett lists the publishers threatening action against the aggregator and says a number of publishers are threatening to seek a court injunction that would stop us linking if the site doesn’t accept proposed charges and controls.

“It is true that news providers perform a critical public-interest role, something we are dedicated to supporting. But the role of news aggregators, as platforms that enable people to locate news and that support a competitive market in news providers, is today equally critical to the public interest,” says the Q&A.

“The impact of the publishers’ proposed charges and controls on link aggregation services like ours is not in the public interest or compatible with newspapers’ stated desire to safeguard journalism and to protect freedom of expression, freedom of communication and access to news.”

Journalism.co.uk also heard from the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) in response to our report on NewsNow’s open letter last week. A spokesman said the NLA supported NewsNows’ non-commercial services e.g. free feeds to consumers.

“We want links back to publishers’ sites and understand their centrality to the internet,” he said.

With regards to NewsNows’ commercial activity e.g. its bespoke feeds for clients, the agency said it is seeking to ‘license and legitimise this activity – not stop it’. In June the agency announced that it intends to start charging web aggregators for a licence permitting them to use links to newspaper articles.

“The NLA believes a legitimate and thriving market in web cuttings – with fair shares for content creators and distributors – will be better for all,” the spokesman said.

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Guardian Politics: Second BNP membership leak expected

Laura Oliver — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:50:59 +0000

According to the Guardian, a new leaked list of British National Party members will be published by a website today.

The unnamed site insists the list, which includes names, addresses, postcodes and telephone numbers, is genuine and represents membership of the party as it stood in April this year.

The data leak would be the second in a year for the party after details of members were released online last November, raising debate about news organisations handling of the data and whether such documents should be linked to.

The party has suggested that the release of new information could be an attempt to undermine the appearance of its leader Nick Griffin on the BBC’s Question Time programme this week.

Full story at this link…

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Going back to the backlink licensing case: NLA’s full statement

Judith Townend — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:38:08 +0000

This goes back to last week, but it seems worth putting up here anyway. Last Thursday Matt Wardman covered this story for Press Gazette: about the Newspaper Licensing Agency regulating hyperlinks for commercial agencies and aggregators.

“The NLA will be introducing a new form of licence from 1 September to regulate ‘web aggregator’ services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity.”

Craig McGill also picked up on it and asked a series of provocative questions. He got a lengthy response from the NLA, including this:

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content.”

More questions are raised in the comments beneath McGill’s piece, including this one about copyright law.

Last Friday Journalism.co.uk spoke to the NLA who said it was part of their new e-Clips service – ‘a feed of newspapers’ online content direct to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies.’

Here’s the NLA statement in full:

“The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) today [dated June 2009] announced a new business-to- business clippings database for newspaper websites to launch in January 2010. It also has said it will extend its licensing remit to cover newspaper websites from January 2010.

“The new service, called eClips web, will offer a complete feed of newspapers’ online content direct to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies. Powered directly from newspapers’ own content-management systems, eClips web will make web-based media monitoring faster and richer and provide a permanent record for PR and communications professionals.

“The NLA will also extend its licensing remit to cover local and national newspapers’ web content. David Pugh, managing director of the NLA, said: “We have two aims: to contribute to the growth of web monitoring; and to protect the rights of publishers. Research shows that 23 per cent of newspapers’ online content never appears in print and that the internet is growing in influence as a resource for news. So it is vital to have comprehensive monitoring coverage of newspapers’ websites – and vital that the publishers are properly rewarded for their work.”

“From September 2009, web aggregators that charge clients for their services will require a NLA licence and be charged from January 2010, The press cuttings agencies that either ’scrape’ content themselves or buy in services from aggregators will also be licensed and charged. Client companies that receive and forward links from these commercial aggregators within their organisation will also require a licence.

“David Pugh added: “We have consulted extensively across the industry – the incremental charges for web cuttings will be low and manageable. I stress this is not about individuals sharing links – we think that’s great for newspapers and promotes their websites and their readership. What we are doing is making sure that newspapers are rewarded fairly for professional use of their web content by businesses.”"

Further notes:

“The NLA is owned by the 8 national newspaper publishing houses and generates B2B revenues for
1,300 national and regional publishers through licensing use of their content by press cuttings
agencies (PCAs) and their client companies.

“The new licences will cover all local and national titles with the exception of the Financial Times and
the News International titles. These will all, however, be included in the eClips web database.”

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Craig McGill: NLA charging for backlinks – a response

Laura Oliver — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:31:23 +0000

As reported by Craig McGill last week, the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) is considering charging organisations for links to newspaper articles.

On Thursday, McGill asked whether the agency would backdate charges and have they considered the impact on traffic this might have for newspaper websites.

The agency has now responded in full to McGill’s questions – including the information that it will not backdate charges and that the change is aimed at organisations and not individuals.

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content,” it says.

“The monitoring industry is highly responsible and wants to work with us – because they want a healthy newspaper industry too. The NLA has been in dialogue with the media monitoring companies for over a year on this subject.”

Full post at this link…

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Star News Online: Why news organisations should link to the competition

Laura Oliver — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:15:09 +0000

It’s fair to say that Journalism.co.uk likes a link and linking to good content from other news sites on our patch is all part of the process.

For many newsrooms it’s a cultural (and sometimes technological/CMS) shift – those introducing a linking out policy could do worse than read StarNews’ executive editor Robyn Tomlin’s thoughts on why her title links to other regional print and broadcast websites:

“I firmly believe that we are much better served by linking out to other voices, sources and even competing news organizations than we are ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away. In the end, we all share a goal of informing and educating our community,” she writes.

“While the web has opened up so many valuable sources of information for our journalists, it’s a shame if we ignore our competitors when we are curating the information that we think is relevant and valuable to people in our community.”

Full post at this link…

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Malcolm Coles: ‘The eight stages of linking-out denial’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:51:18 +0000

Malcolm Coles has created a ‘linking-out denial’ scale – so, where do you site? At number two, ‘Add URLs but don’t make them hyperlinks’, or have you reached the enlightenment of number 8, ‘Making linking part & parcel of what I do’.

Full post at this link…

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MalcolmColes: UK newspapers and their ‘authorised’ linking policies

Judith Townend — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:06:32 +0000

Also reproduced at the OnlineJournalismBlog, Malcolm Coles’ post looks at how some UK newspapers have gone so far with their site terms and conditions that ‘you’re not allowed to link to – or even read – their website.’

Full post at this link…

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Online Journalism Scandinavia: Resolutions for 2009 – Yes, we link

Kristine Lowe — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:37:46 +0000

Danish journalists pen link manifesto, which should be an inspiration for journalists everywhere in 2009.

The last quarter of 2008 did not only open our eyes to how flawed the fiscal economy is, in Scandinavia more and more journalists also realised how awkwardly media organisations operate in the link economy.

In Norway, the union chapel at DN.no, the news site of the country’s biggest financial daily, suggested introducing a common link policy for all the country’s news sites to make it profitable to produce good original articles rather than just to copy-paste.

In Denmark, a survey by eJour found just two links to external sites when monitoring seven Danish news sites over a period of two weeks. Blogging journalists in Denmark were also up in arms over a renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop websites like Google News from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper’s homepage.

Against this backdrop, Kim Elmose, the blog editor of Politiken.dk, and Lars K. Jensen, a project manager at Ekstrabladet.dk, launched a link manifesto and encouraged news rooms everywhere to write their own link commandments and use their manifesto freely.

Let’s hope this can inspire more and better linking on many a news site in 2009:

First law: We link to the sources for the data we use in our journalistic products. If we have read, seen or heard important new information on an external site – for instance about companies, people or surveys – we will link to it.

Second law: We link directly and precisely to the information we use from external sites. In this way we provide proper service to our readers rather than just linking to the front page of the external site.

Third law: We are precise in our information about where a link leads to; about who has produced the information we link to and when. The readers should know where it takes them when they follow a link.

Fourth law: We recognise that an article consisting of precise links to information that represents different angles on an issue is a journalistic product.

Fifth law: We are open to inbound links to our own news sites because we want to be an integrated part of the web’s ecosystem

Sixth law: We aspire to making it easier to link directly to our articles.

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Washington Post using Apture for article links

Laura Oliver — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:50:29 +0000

The Washington Post has teamed up with Apture to add embedded links into its news articles. Washington Post articles, video content and Google maps will be linked to using the technology, which, according to a press release, requires only a single line of code to make the links appear.

Information from WaPo’s Congressional Votes Database will be linked to congress and senate members’ names when they appear in articles, as part of the new design.

WaPo content will now be available to other media and political sites that sign up to Apture. Articles already allow readers to view who’s linking to that content in the blogosphere.

Apture’s technology has previously been used by BBC News as part of its inline links trial and its use by WaPo follows the launch of the New York Times’ link aggregation service TimesExtra last week.

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