Extending Coverage Through "Link Journalism"

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 lately has been extolling the virtues of linking as part of professional media coverage. Hardly a new concept in social media, but one that still hasn't gained complete traction as traditional media migrates online.

He dubs it "link journalism" and recently touted the efforts of one of his company's clients, Knoxville News Sentinel, in using it. I happen to agree with his overall outlook, but I think the devil is in the details. First, read his original post for context and then the comment I left on his post:

I agree that “link journalism” is something that more media outlets should explore. But notice what you did differently with your post than the paper did with its own. You included excerpts from the original sources rather than just raw headline links.

Headlines like “Snow” or “More Snow!!!” don’t tell me much about what to expect from the post, so therefore don’t entice me to click over. To be successful, I think that such journalism needs to provide added value beyond simply linking, by helping to guide the reader to the best content or at least setting expectations on each link.

It’s much like creating a news story. The reporter must decide what facts to include in writing the story rather than simply publishing a bulleted list of facts.

Comments

[Jeff Turner]

Chip... I've got no problem at all with link journalism, in fact I welcome it. But as you point out in your comment, the example used in his post lacks "meat." The links were fine, the way they were used added no value.