The Star and CityNews Show Us Some Link Love

Did anyone notice that Global news reported on the Dumpling House rat situation several days after it was here?
Moreover, they led the viewers to believe that it was just being reported at that very moment.
It took careful listening and re-hearing to learn the truth that it was from last week.

Here's the cached version of the Star rats article, showing the links to blogTO before they removed them.

This pretty much proves that somebody went out of their way to UNLINK the story.

So the burning question is.... did the reporter do this on his/her own volition, and if so, why? Were they ordered to remove the hyperlink from someone above?

Was the original linking in violation of their archaic internal policies?

Whatever the situation, I did notice the articles those days and was impressed by linkage.

I'm am specifically impressed in the direction CityNews is looking to go. With the 5pm news and shiny new graphics, the upcoming Blue Jays game, and their CityNews website, I look forward to them stepping up their game to challenge CTV's Americanized broadcasts (& ratings). Blah blah I know about the Amber MacArthur story, but I'm sure it was a business decision. CityNews right now is bringing up the standard of Toronto News (and Toronto handsome Reporters).

To add, the CityTV Breakfast Television live coverage of that Queen West was pretty phenomenal. That was some good morning TV. CBC was still sleeping, CTV was doing something with Canada, and Global was a joke.

So yes to CityNews! I gotta give thanks to Mr.Rogers for not letting CTV bastardize my cable.

Why re-invent the story if it exists elsewhere, sometimes with better prose. It seems sometimes like plagiarism to see the same story. If there are different points-of-view then go on with the story, but if repeating or copy-pasting the information, it would be better to just supply the link.

I've been impressed with the TorStar produced videos they've been including in some of their stories. Very different for a print media co.

Thanks for this post Tim! With regards to CityNews.ca we're really trying to bring back the original Citytv vibe (which was more about the community of Toronto and not just the crime and weather).

Although we do have to support the TV side, we are becoming more independent and doing original stories and videos (such as our series on indie video stores this week). Rogers is very supportive of what we're doing and does get the importance of the web (I don't say this lightly - Amber Mac is one of my best friends and we came to City together).

Hopefully we can do more with blogTO in the future. There is no reason why we can't share resources or materials (and of course link to you when we can).

Link love eh? Who'd've thunk such a thing would ever occur.

Maybe I'll stop linking to the Toronto Star every morning in the blogTO Morning Brew from here forward, and go back and remove all the hundreds of href tags from the Morning Brews from the last two years ;)

You do realize that most people in "traditional media" last less time in one place than you've been doing this site, right? Most are looking for a way out. Nice job, but making a big deal out of this makes you look old-school, Tim.

Am I old school? The intention of this post wasn't to brag about being linked to - maybe the title makes it come across that way. But the point was really just to shed light on how traditional media look to be slowly changing their linking policies, be they to blogTO, Torontoist or any other site. We saw big American newspaper sites slowly start to change their policies in the last 18 months, so it's nice to see the big Canadian sites start to come around.

Guess I wasn't the only one surprised after all. From what I've gathered by speaking with "traditional media" insiders, the major outlets are reluctant to show bloggers much love for a few reasons. First of all, you guys have helped step the news cycle up from the daily grind it was, to the feverish constant blur we now know. Bloggers frequently get the story first, but some - I'm not naming names, and certainly not referring to blogTO - do that by ignoring proper journalistic protocol (disinterest, giving both sides, verification, etc). Verification of rumors is a time consuming process, but some bloggers just print the rumors, and I think old school journos resent that "wild west" attitude. The best recent example of this I can think of was the blogger coverage of the whispered rumors of Castro's death. A few blogs "scooped" everyone else by just printing that their brother's babysitter's drinking buddy's dog walker said that Fidel had kicked it.

You think you weren't being linked due to "policies" or stupidity? I don't think there was any conspiracy to discredit you before. Nobody still knows what they're doing with the internets or how to make money off it.

A few days ago, I sent a complaint and posed the question (why remove the links after the fact?) to the Star using the report form on the rats article. I haven't received a response yet.