Soccer Dad

More traffic for the times?

NRO's Media Blog writes about the possible future of newspapers

There are two ways newspapers can deal with this new reality. The regionals are going local. The nationals are going with more analysis in the print product while breaking news online.

I'm guessing that a serious newspaper will also rely a bit on online advertising. Until now the New York Times has been limiting free access to more and more of its content. It went from allowing free looks into the archives for four weeks to two weeks to one week. Then it started putting some of its content behind Times Select.

If you wanted to avoid having older links to Times' articles getting redirected to the pay archives you'd have to use Bloglines or the NY Times Link Generator to generate links to Times articles that you wish to save.

Now, however the Times, is opting to make it possible with two clicks for all bloggers to create a permalink URL to all their articles. So if you go to today's op-ed by Dennis Ross you'll see a box with a number of options. The final option is "SHARE." Click on "SHARE" and you'll get four more options, the last of which is "Permalink." Click on "Permalink" and you'll get a little window with the permanent URL, the title and a brief synopsis of the article. Use that URL and you'll never have to worry about your links getting redirected to the pay archives with only a synopsis to remind your readers of the topic you were referring to.

I can only guess that the Times realizes that traffic to its site means higher advertising rates and that bloggers can help direct that vital traffic to them.

Blogdigger tags: URLs, Blogging, New York Times, Permalink.