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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Diversity in news linking styles: a case study of ElPaís.com
Salaverría, Ramón
School of Communication, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
In the recent years, the online publications have incorporated progressively the use of
hypertextual links as a way of improving their users’ experience. Unlike the
‘shovelware’model that characterized the beginnings of online publishing in the late
90’s, during the first decade of this Century the most developed publications have
tried to stress the differentiation between their print and online content. One of the
most evident signs of that distinction lies in the hypertextual enrichment of news
stories on the web, thanks to the increasing use of links inside the texts.
This tendency, which is especially noticeable among the leading online publications,
faces however a problem in its practice: the lack of rules for journalists about what,
when, and how should be linked. Indeed, very few stylebooks have mentioned so far
any single explanation about how the links should be used in the news stories, from a
stylistic point of view. This lack style guidelines lead journalists to take very
heterogeneous ways when embedding links into their news stories.
This paper presents the results of a comparative study of news pieces published by
ElPaís.com, the online edition ofthe leading Spanish newspaper ‘El País’. Based
upon a broad sample of news stories captured in 2011, the research examines the
usage of links within the text of different types of information: common news stories,
blog posts published in newspaper’s blogs, and microblogging updates published in
Eskup (a Twitter-like platform of news publishing used by ElPaís.com for spreading its
breaking news). In 2011, all these three types of news pieces are regularly used by
ElPaís.com to spread its information. Using webmetrics techniques, the comparison
of different patterns of linkage in each of these three platforms –amoun of links in
each news piece, destination, position, anchor-text, etc.- gives clear evidences of a
growing stylistic diversity when using hypertextual links in online newswriting.
To link or not to link? An ethnographic inquiry into newsroom dynamics.
De Maeyer, Juliette
Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Université Libre de
Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium
The possibility to add hyperlinks to news items is one of the key elements
distinguishing online journalism from its offline counterparts. Since the beginnings of
the world wide web, hyperlinks are said to improve the quality of news in several
ways. For instance, by pointing directly to sources, they guarantee transparency as
well as credibility. By leading to a virtually infinite variety of opinions, they ensure
diversity. Even if a consensus exists on the alleged qualities of linking for online
journalism, previous research repeatedly highlighted that news sites link scarcely and
therefore fail to fully embrace hyperlinking.
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