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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Complex, properly created structures: Taken from the New York Times, 22/03/2011
Needless to say, internal links are preferred to external ones. Media like New York
Times, Guardian.co.uk, BBC.co.uk/news or ElPaís.com (the latest one, with erratic
strategy) use to include external links in the case of reports or documents –
documentary links-, while the internal ones are mainly semantical-connective and
developmental when referred to the main narration line, and semantical-associativeaddition
(they add information to the main narration) usually in the deeper levels, not in
the first one. When they are offered in the first node, the semantical-connective links
are embedded ones, and the semantical-associative are superposed (a list, usually)
ones. Sidebar links, as we have seen often the same ones presented differently in the
first node, are reserved to second-level nodes. Menu-like sidebar links are used when
a complex structure (not a merely accumulative one) is properly developed for the
news item. As we are studying breaking news, and they are refreshed during the period
event are happening, this kind of links are preferred in documentary nodes.
Sequential links are few; not always a contextual link addressed to related news are
conceived this way, usually is just a choice used with non-narrative purposes, in fact,
the union of two or more nodes of different but related news does not guarantee a
coherent reading. The reader must complete this role instead of the journalist, since
sometimes those links are automatically generated after a searching session. All links
examine are athor-created ones; readers just could include a link –and this is a rather
unfrequent fact- a hyperink to an internal node –very rare- or to a external resource
inside a comment. Online edition is already strictly managed by the medium and the
journalists. If coherence was to be an objective, a returning link to the newest node
should be offered from the related news nodes, and between them, and this is not so.
Real sequential links are, in fact, scarce. Links from the second node/level are of two
types: embedded ones link to related news (same day/another day/special reports
done by accumulation). Superposed ones go to the same multimedia nodes
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