As I mentioned in my previous entry about Adam Gaffin’s new “Blog Log” column in The Boston Globe and published at boston.com, I emailed boston.com to ask them about their linking policy and why they do not link to websites other than the third-party stock info website. This is the response they sent to me in email.
Dear Susan:
Thank you for writing to Boston.com. At the bottom of the article you’re referring to is a link to Universal Hub, www.universalhub.com/globe/0227. This link list all the blog mentioned. Due to time constraint, we cannot add any additional links.
You saw links in some business articles because it is automatically generated in our publishing tool when there is a publicly traded company. We hope this clears up the confusion.
If you any additional questions, please let us know.
Kind regards,
Customer Support
Boston.com
This is what I sent to them in response to that.
Hey there:
Thanks very much for your reply.
You noted in your reply that the bottom of the article includes a
link. Almost … but not quite. The link is listed, but it’s not a
link that you can click on — it’s just regular text … meaning you
have to copy and paste it into your browser to get to it.Would it be possible to at least make the link to Universal Hub’s site active?
Also, I wasn’t confused. I’m not sure what gave you that idea. I
asked for insight into your linking (or lack thereof) policy. I don’t
see how my lack of insight into your policy could be considered
confusion.Susan
In 1999 I worked for a television show and website called Wild, Wild Web. We used an oh-my-god-we-paid-you-how-much-money-for-this craptastic content management system (Vignette) to publish website articles that were the online companions to features on the television show. Somehow, way back then, we managed to make that awful Vignette system work so that links could be easily inserted into the web articles. I can’t imagine it would be all that difficult for boston.com to do this in 2005.
Is it really a time constraint issue for boston.com or do they only want to link to a site that they may (?) get a kickback from such as that stock portfolio website?