In writing the previous entry I was delighted to find that the New York Times has an option for permanent links to its articles - that is, links or “permalinks” that do not expire or require the user to access a restricted archive. This is something I’ve wanted from newspapers, and according to The Next Net, the Times started doing so at the end of last year (2006). With Times articles, click on “Share” near the beginning or top of the article on that page (on the right), then “Permalink,” and you’ll have the link you want. The Times even has this cool “link generator” for finding permalinks to its articles.

From what I can tell, the StarTribune, the principal newspaper here in the Upper Midwest, does not have permalinks for its articles. For example, when I wrote about a biofuels study in an entry a few weeks ago, I linked to a Dec. 7 StarTribune article on biofuels. When I click on the link for the latter now, I get this “file not found” message:

The page you requested could not be found. It may have been moved; more likely it has been removed from our servers. Most articles are automatically purged from startribune.com’s free news database after three weeks. Exceptions include obituaries, recipes and movie reviews.

Aggravating! When possible, I’ll avoid linking to StarTribune stories because of their lack of permanence. Problem is, it’s the major newspaper here and I’m a subscriber and I read it. If anyone would like to join with me and request the Strib to change its policy, or if I can help someone else do so, let me know.

For more on these issues, see a January 2005 entry in Jay Rosen’s PressThink blog and an essay from PressThink, “The Importance of Being Permanent,” by Simon Waldman, which explore the issue in more detail.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under About Northern Letter, Blogging, Media.