Linking to NY Times

Thanks to Boing Boing, I stumbled across this article in Wired about the New York Times not ever having a good presence in search engine results--because its articles are quickly put into a pay-for-view archive which discourages bloggers from linking to articles. In Google, the more people who link to an article, the more likely it will show up prominently in its results and vice versa. Thus, although the NY Times featured the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on its front page for 32 days, it is hardly a blip on the Google radar. Clearly, the NY Times digital business model is having some negative repercussions.

Despite Jayson Blair, many people, myself included, still regard the NY Times as the standard by which to judge other news sources. I usually check it several times a day. However, I have been reluctant to link to any articles in it from my blog, and by extension, to comment on any articles in it.

And then, lo and behold, this very same article mentions a backdoor to the NY Times archive for bloggers, a generator that creates stable links to the NY Times. Dave Winer from RadioUserland explains how it works.

So in celebration, I now post a link to this NY Times piece on the posthumous work of Elliott Smith. I hope it works.

Posted by Mike Waugh at July 15, 2004 09:56 AM