News links and the lost generation

I was just reading about a leading blogger's frustrations with a London newspaper for interviewing him at length but not linking to his site, when clearly it would have been appropriate and gracious.

I'd say the author of this story in the (U.K.) Guardian was pretty thorough in his use of links, even though our blogger, Andy Beard, has a legit beef. Europe long has been ahead of the U.S. in connecting print and online.

When you read a lot of blogs, of course, you take it for granted that links will be made, that they will be relevant. And that comments will be encouraged (even if they're monitored). On that level, almost all major newspaper sites fail. Most rarely link out except in listings, "service" stories and the like.

The New York Times, for example, inserts links into some of its main news stories, but they almost always go to the Times' archive search results for the linked terms. These keyword links appear automated and rarely are of much use. (This may be linked to recently abandoned attempts to restrict all archive access.) The Los Angeles Times' hard news stories typically contain no links.

I worked on newspapers and magazines for decades, and in web news publishing for 13 years. It took a lot of work to convince execs that linking was a good thing. Why would we send people to other web sites? We want them to stay here and view our ads. That sort of thing. When I pressed for links to direct competitors, it was time to break out the defilibrators.

Another barrier: Good contextual linking can't be done by computers, despite what the database guys promise. Doing that job well means dedicated manpower. As in salaries and benefits. Tough sell.

In my experience, publishers talk up a storm about the Internet being the future, while their online units gasp for basic resources. This seemed to be a universal experience for web news units, based on the annual commiseration confab hosted by the Online News Assn.

(My old boss, publisher Bob Dowling of the Hollywood Reporter, actually demanded we hire a links editor. Smart guy.)

Suits and bean-counters aren't the only resisters: Most reporters and editors have only recently warmed to online as anything more than a repurposer of news. Still, far too many editorial staffers would just as soon see new media go away -- too much extra work, too complicated, too transparent.

I do believe the sea change will come only when Gen X starts filling the executive ranks. On this front, mine is a lost generation.

(Confession/disclaimer: I use links on my DVD blog to link to Amazon products. Although the content on Amazon can be quite useful, I profit from any sales. ... Feel free to tear the mask of hypocrisy from my face.)

TimesSelect: Good riddance

Great news just in from the Old Gray Lady: TimesSelect is no more.

Unless you paid (one way or another), the TimesSelect program denied access to the New York Times' Op-Ed and news columns, as well as searches of the national newspaper's archives.

No one liked the idea when it started two years back, especially existing paper subscribers, who were suddenly cut off until they went through a buggy online signup process. The Times' Web-only readers had to pay $50 a year to view that content -- after a decade of getting it free.

On Tuesday, The Times explained the liberation this way:

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion -- as well as share it, link to it and comment on it.

A bit of upstairs/downstairs remains: The Times' online archive now is wide open for searches back to 1987, but print subscribers have access to articles dating back to 1851.

What changed ... was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

The few newspapers that could make money for "premium content" have been retreating as Web economics make it clear there's more money in ads than online subscriptions. The most successful online premium purveyor, the Wall Street Journal, appears headed that way under Rupert Murdoch. Update 10/12: Murdoch confirms the site is going all-free.

The web site I worked on for a decade or so, hollywoodreporter.com, opened up almost all of its content a year ago after having most of its existence financed by premium subs. Spooky but my boss made a good call.

Back to the Times:

I've made this point several times on the blog: If you're serious about writing for a mass audience, the New York Times is a must-read. Every day.

I live in L.A., where we have a very good local paper. Yes, the other Times. (Ever notice how so many people hate their city's newspaper? I worked on a real stinker back in Florida, and even my closest pals hurled abuse at me about that daily.)

About a year ago, I decided to have but one paper hit the doorstep each morning. Wasn't hard to choose. The L.A. Times now competes for my attention via its nightly email. The Wall Street Journal, I do miss.

The New York Times recently upped its subscription price and cut the physical size of the newspaper to that ratty new "national print standard." Yuck.

I love that Old Gray Lady anyway. All is forgiven. Baby, you're the best.

Update: 12/11/07: New York Times traffic soared with the demise of Select. In October, the site added 4.9 million readers, according to comScore.

Meaningless word coined by a psychotic

I just created a word. A compound noun to be exact. With a snazzy hyphen. One for the ages: ice-goof.

Who invested this authority in me? No one, really. I just needed a word, it didn't seem to exist, so voila!

Every single word in every language had an inventor, of course, and I think ice-goof is as good as a third of them.

What is an ice-goof? Use it in a declarative sentence, please?"

OK.

" 'Blades of Glory,' The Will Ferrell ice-goof, opened at No. 1 on the box office charts."

This noun/adjective might not catch on, but by venting this bit of improv I avoided a description that feels familiar and worn, such as "skating comedy." Not quite Kerouac, but I try.

This, according to Merriam-Webster, is a neologism: "a meaningless word coined by a psychotic." (I am not making this up.) Fortunately, that is the No. 2 definition. The first is a bit more kind: "a new word, usage, or expression." Want to dig in? Here's "A Century of New Words" (Oxford Paperback Reference) from John Ayto.

New words tend to start off life hyphenated. The hyphen adds some clarity, reducing the shock of the new. Then they close up as usage widens. The "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" just de-hyphenated 16,000 words. (De-hyphenated?) So icegoof could happen. If we all believe, yes it could.

Give it a try. Next post, make up a word or two. Do a mash-up (n., neologism).

More on hyphens: See the usage of "box office charts" up above? For editors who work on the Hollywood trades, which deal with box-office numbers all the time, the two-word-hyphen thing got really old with repeated use. So, for some of the trades, it's simply boxoffice. (The rest of America, curiously, has not felt the need for that economy.)

Same sort of thing with "Web site." You see "website" more often these days as the original connection to World Wide Web unravels a bit. This is the kind of evolution that keeps psychotics and linguistic professors in business.

Noted with pleasure: NYT tech guy Pogue

David Pogue, the New York Times' technology and personal electronics guru, does a great job writing user-friendly copy about user-hostile material.

Pogue comes across as a real everyman, a friendly geek who's just trying to sort out the quantum-leaping jumble of tech developments for the folks in his audience. His weekly online videos are a hoot -- a homespun contrast to the sleek hip image of the products he reviews.

Here's how Pogue kicked off his latest State of the Art column, about a new movie download service:

If you had to make a master list of all the world’s problems, “limited access to movies” probably wouldn’t appear until Page 273,996.

Truth is, life is teeming with opportunities to see movies: movie theaters, video stores, DVD-by-mail services, TV movie channels, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, Xbox 360, iTunes, Internet downloads, hotel rooms, airplanes and so on.

But according to the team at Vudu, all of those outlets are flawed.

I really like the way Pogue gets into this article. It's a delayed lead, meaning he waits a few paragraphs before getting to the point. Pogue engages the audience right away -- the first two grafs deliver a modest bit of Seinfeld-esque observational humor: Everyone agrees and nods.

The kicker, the third graf, is the one that keeps you reading. Only after that curious sentence does the columnist start telling his story, getting to the who-what-when-where-how-and-sometimes-why three grafs later than most writers would.

Pogue pulls it off in part because of his economy -- he burns off just three sentences. They're all in separate paragraphs, encouraging the reader to move through them quickly. (Paragraph length is a great way of controlling pacing.) The lead wouldn't work if it were packaged in one bulky paragraph.

Pogue almost certainly didn't sit down and select that approach -- he just started typing. It's in his bag of tricks, though, and at some point he learned the lesson I'm offering in this post: Smart, short delayed leads make great audience bait.

Breaking down good writers' content almost always pays off. Give it a try next time you're reading the Times or a writers magazine such as Esquire or Vanity Faire.

(If Vudu, the product, interests you, be sure to check out my blog Downloading Movies 101.)

MSN Live beta now fishing for testers

Microsoft is running a public beta for its new webmaster-assistance center, Webmaster Portal ("creative name ... we're really good at marketing," the writeup says with a wink.)

If you write a blog are you a webmaster? Sure, why not.

(I always thought that "webmaster" tag was a hoot -- it surfaced in the early days of the web when guys who knew a bit of code liked to operate like the Wiz of Oz behind that flimsy curtain. Kind of a Dungeons and Dragons influence in there.)

You should apply because people who are accepted (maybe that's everybody) get access to troubleshooting tools to ensure the MSNBot is crawling your site; sitemap creation and ping services; web site stats; and some other vague stuff. MSN Live Search absolutely matters, even though it's in the shadow of Google, like everything else.

Google provides many free resources as well, including the awesome Google Analytics (Urchin) and various submission tools.

These are great free marketing and research services for any, ahem, webmaster. Grab them while they're free.