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On the journalism front, there's a little flurry of discussion over how news organizations need to rebuild themselves, leading to this memo from Tampa Tribune editor Janet Coats on the plans for an 'interactive newsroom' joining the newspaper, online and television news processes. Last week, lots of bloggers and commenters reacted to a posting by Tampa intern Jessica DaSilva, "It's worth fighting for" , quoting Coats' talk with newsroom staffers. Lots of the comments here were negative (sample:) Wow, you really are young and naive, aren’t you? Someone sent me the link to your blog, and I almost had to laugh, it was so ridiculous. I’m truly amazed that in one of your other posts, you can tell reporters to stop whining and do something about their situation. What, praytell, young lady, would you like them to do? This lead to Ryan Sholin's posting, Declare your independence from the curmudgeon tribe . Hmm. It's hard all around, and on some of these ...

Wow, I didn't even know this was going on. Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 says the New York Times Embraces Link Journalism and cites an example of a blog entry at The Lede that's full of links to other papers. Is this true of Times stories and other blogs? I usually don't click on Times links because they usually go to Times stories by category. As in this story , about the new Firefox Web browser. The link to Microsoft goes to Times stories on Microsoft , et cetera. A good sign, especially if it's not just happening at The Lede.....from Karp: ...the Times has clearly gotten over the red herring fear of “sending people away.” The Lede has helped readers make sense of what they read elsewhere, helping to make the Lede more essential than those other source.

On a topic I've posted about for years, great article in Slate by Jack Shafer, Links that Stink . According to Shafer, many newspapers and other sites' links lead to irrelevant pages, popup ads, or don't link at all: The extraneous links etched into most Washingtonpost.com stories, for example, make it look as though an insect rode a unicycle dipped in blue ink through the copy before you got there. There's no point in having links unless they point to something that's relevant. Which leads to another point: Why doesn't every newspaper Web site routinely link directly to the competition's work? If a competitor's story is good enough to cite in the copy, it's good enough to link to. Of course, for years I cringed when a great story in a competing paper was never even mentioned in the paper I read. Thank goodness they at least get mentioned, but, really, the link is important. Once again: Links make you relevant. Links are the currency of the Web. If...