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Ingram: Adding links is as essential as spellcheck when writing online

Jeff Sonderman by Jeff Sonderman Published May 18, 2011 10:59 am Updated May 19, 2011 6:29 pm

MathewIngram.com
Tuesday night, Mathew Ingram and C.W. Anderson provoked an interesting debate on Twitter about whether journalists have a responsibility to link in their stories, with a couple of New York Times staffers questioning how essential such links are for news stories. Ingram, who writes for GigaOM, argued: “Why do we write these articles at all? To inform — and links to further information are part of that duty we owe our readers.” The Times’ Jacob Harris and Patrick LaForge responded that some links are good but not essential, and that Times writers instead focus on producing content worth linking to. Ingram pulled out highlights from the conversation on his blog.

CLARIFICATION: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that Ingram recapped the entire exchange on his site; he actually pulled out parts of the conversation. LaForge disagreed with Ingram’s account in the comments on a related post on GigaOM.

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  • Anonymous

    We include links at the end of our stories for American Forces Press Service on Defense.gov.  Years ago, we included the links within the stories — hyperlinking the secretary of defense’s name to his official biography, for example, on first reference. But we did some research that indicated people usually wouldn’t come back to the story if they clicked on any of the links within it.  I think having the links at the end is a good compromise between having links within the stories and not having links at all, but I continue to notice many high-profile sites hyperlinking text within articles.  Has a definitive consensus emerged on that issue?

  • Anonymous

    I heart links.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks 

  • http://twitter.com/palafo Patrick LaForge

    The summary here is not quite right. I did not, and would not say, that links are not essential. I was responding to the inaccurate claim that we don’t care about links at The Times. In fact, we care a great deal. – Patrick LaForge 

  • http://twitter.com/j_nb Jessica Binsch

    I think this also points to whether links should open in a new tab or in the same one. I personally hate it when I click on a link and it opens in the same tab, taking me away from the story. But I understand that not everyone likes having 10 tabs open at the same time, either.

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