Sites of large media holdings begin to put external links

Not a decade later, as major media giants decided to soften their brutal rules regarding external links. Previously, they were under strict prohibition. Any external URL could be mentioned only in text form, but in no case as a hyperlink, and at the slightest opportunity to avoid mentioning the URL altogether. The reason was that any external link gives the user the opportunity to leave the site.

These rules look strange, but they have always been valid and even still operate on many major Russian media sites, such as the websites of television stations and news agencies. You will never see a link to another site there. But overseas bans, finally, are beginning to gradually be removed, writes the NY Times.

As reported, external links are allowed on the new Internet projects of the Washington Post, NBC and the NY Times. Including officially allowed links to competitors' sites. Moreover, holding journalists make new online projects entirely based on links (for example, the Political Browser from the Wahington Post). Experts consider this the most important paradigm shift and a fundamentally new phenomenon for the print media. In their opinion, the culture of linking creates a "new architecture of the media space."