Gothamist: Photo Blogs of the Times

laura

Thu, 29 May 2003 14:29:29 -0500

update/// just received this from nytimes arts/web person: "Laura: Thank you for bringing the spacing problem on the photo blog story to our attention. I also improved accessibility to the sites by linking to them on the side of the page." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/design/25BOXE.html >> thanks to Sarah Boxer and Inger Lund

red

Wed, 28 May 2003 12:53:54 -0500

ok, it's dork time. working on a project today, I came across a situation that brought me to this conclusion on why URLs in New York Times articles are the way they are: 1. They generally avoid linking to other sites because it drives traffic away. 2. The URLs contain spaces because continuous URLs that happen to be too long will not wrap automatically. This will cause pages to 'break' or expand to a width beyond the design of the template.

Jen

Sun, 25 May 2003 16:30:55 -0500

Yes, one would think the hyperlinks should be (a) correctly entered into the article for easy cut-and-paste and (b) live for easy exploration, but according to our sources at the Times, the links are decided by the people at the website, which is in a totally separate building. I doubt editorial gets to look over the online-version of the articles...ah, print journalism still has a ways to go with being online.

jake

Sun, 25 May 2003 16:29:22 -0500

i agree- i think it's probably just a mistake in the digital version.

laura

Sun, 25 May 2003 16:11:43 -0500

I emailed the author of the article to inform her that the urls are disfunctional for cutting/pasting... I believe she would surely want them to work, as they can enhance her editorial... The site's function is to serve an editorial purpose, as much as the print format, yes?

Jen

Sun, 25 May 2003 14:22:29 -0500

Another good point about the article that Laura brought up today was you can't even properly cut and paste the links, because for some reason, they put spaces in the URL addresses! Crazy! And, Steve, not sure what you're disagreeing with...

jake

Sun, 25 May 2003 13:57:16 -0500

i'm not sure- i definitely want to talk to our "sources" at the times and see if someone can give me a copy of the link policy. because it seems inconsistant- last weekend they linked a bunch of sites directly, but this weekend they did not. Why?

red

Sun, 25 May 2003 13:54:14 -0500

oops, I meant the article was well put, not Steve's comment.

red

Sun, 25 May 2003 13:53:27 -0500

well put. and why are links in articles used only for stock quotes?

Steve

Sun, 25 May 2003 12:56:26 -0500

I disagree.