Don't Get Lost in Links

Once spurned practice gains intractable foothold.

The standard use of links in online news was slow to gain traction with major news outlets, but has now become part of almost every major breaking news story. Information providers have learned to take advantage of the power of links, using them as veritable click-able gateways into infinitesimal universes of knowledge. Journalistic linking practices were developed that defined some ethics of linking. Some of these standards are commonly referred to when journalists vet a link for relevance:

• Make sure links are relevant
• Update links to make sure they are not "dead ends."
• Use links with discretion; and make sure information at the end of the link adds to the story.

But has linking gotten out of control?

Here are three different linking practices:

1. The "contextual" link.

Let's look at this story from the New York Times: U.S. and Russia Near Deal to Cut Nuclear Arsenals

This story provides a link to "Russia", which links to an entire dossier of information and articles about Russia. This meets the three standards of linking and journalistic integrity.

2. "Under-linking"

While this article from The Budapest Sun has lots of information about cultural events in Budapest for Christmas, there are no links to the relevant places to provide added intrigue. Only one link to the event page itself is listed at the bottom. If readers are interested in learning more about any of the event performers or venues, they have to inevitably do a whole new search using a search engine. The more steps it takes to get to the real information, the more likely it is that readers will drop off along the way.

3. "Over-linking"

Here is a nice article about the phenomenon of "over-linking" from, who else, Wikipedia!

I have to wholeheartedly agree with this article about the negligence of linking to the definition of a word itself. Here is a very clear example. See how I used that link to guide the reader to the definition of "example" instead of an ACTUAL example? This kind of meta-embedding of meaning through the reckless overuse of links drives me absolutely crazy. Unless it is a basic English lesson, don't link to definitions of words themselves! You click-happy linkers are clogging up the cybersphere.