Sunday 26 October 2008

The perils of link journalism at the NYT

Thursday, Oct 23 (Daily FishbowlNY)
New York Times Loves the Little Guy


In Jon Pareles' column yesterday, "This Is the Music of the Blogs," the New York Times music critic details a night he spent going to concerts hosted by music blogs during the CMJ Music Marathon.

His evening out offers an intimate portrait of the relationship between indie bands and the blogs that love, hate, make and break them. "Sometime in the mid-2000s, the words indie-rock and blog became inseparable. The two were made for each other," Pareles writes. During the course of the article, he attends showcases put on by four separate blogs — The Music Slut, Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum.

Interestingly, in the online version of the article only the first two are linked. We found this strange. While the latter two are bigger and, therefore, might need as much press, they are hardy "household names." Considering the author feels the need to explain CMJ, it's clear the article is aimed at the general public who likely wouldn't have heard of Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum. A link in the Times leads to increased traffic and recognition — while she declined to cite specific numbers, via email The Music Slut told us her traffic doubled yesterday because of the mention — and we are curious as to why the paper wouldn't link to all four. It's not as though it's difficult or time consuming.

We contacted Pareles to find out if he had any say in what was linked and what wasn't, but he has yet to return our call.


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