sorry, scott.

indeed, once you get beyond the image-oriented value of branding exposure, online advertising conversion is pretty much about driving traffic to sites via clickthroughs.

if one applies the old pr-vs-ad print rules about one inch of news copy being worth 100 times (or some other similarly giant multiple) of the same inch of display advertising, how much is an inline, contextual link in article body copy worth compared to a text ad or banner ad.

clearly, search engines like google value them highly, and for good reason. inline hyperlinking is the fundamental value proposition behind the initial creation of hypertext markup language. and prior to search engines, it was the only way to navigate the WWW if you didn’t get a direct URL via word of mouth. this seems to also be playing out where online branding and marketing folks are trying to get bloggers to give them some link juice.

in a revenue-challenged environment, i can see many reasons why the new york times would consider not linking from story copy a sensible practice in protecting editorial integrity and advertising value at the same time… at least for now.

Brian Stelter has linked to our blog from his TVDecoder blog posts at NYT, but perhaps that is verboten from news “articles”.

In the end, it’s a business decision, albeit a dumb one.

One of the few things I love about Wikipedia is that you have tons of cross-linking throughout an article. Normally I’ll find myself wandering through several pages, but when I come to a dead end, I always pop back to the page from which I started to wander.

I’d have to agree with Jason, but in markets with smaller web staffs, it’s less about “making” the time than it is “having” the time to do it.

That said, I fully agree with Cory that outside links would be nice. However, a link FROM the Times carries enormous weight in the handshake process, and they likely figure there’s no quid pro quo. Lame.

We typically include links in an outside column next to our stories (Related Links). Click my name to read a recent story I did on Minnesotans using YouTube: I coded the links right into the body of the story.

It always drives me nuts when the local newspaper writes a story about a web page or web venture and doesn’t link it.

They’re focused so much on beating the competition and holding their content close to their vests they lose site of the reason why they exist: The consumer and their wants and needs.

I now see that the “24″ article isn’t to a mainsite article, but to another “TVDecoder” post. (I could’ve sworn it was a mainsite article when I first read it, a couple of weeks ago, but I’m probably wrong) Anyway… So, my whole theory about the “reliability” of blogs has gone out the window, but any way you look at it, we can at least see that the Times might have a different linking policy for their in-house blogs, if nothing else.

(Sorry about my confusion. I just got out of a loooong meeting and obviously didn’t think)

I’d venture that the NYTimes may have a policy about linking to blogs, rather than outside sites.

If you click my name, you’ll find one of Brian Stelter’s NYTimes “TVDecoder” entries which addressed the way the strike would affect many popular shows.

All of the source links in that post point toward mainstream media sources and if you click the one beside “24″, you’re taken to a mainsite article, also written by Brian, which links to a grid from the LATimes.

So, though I may be mistaken, I have to assume that the lack of a link in the Nikki Finke article is more reflective of the Times questioning the reliability of blogs, rather than a blanket policy against all outside links.

(I apologize if this is a dupe. I don’t know what happened)