6 ms·

AP Finally Learns that You Can Link to Other Sites on the Internet

60 points by jsherry 15y ago

jhawk28 15y ago
They are most likely putting the bitly links in parenthesis so that the story can be printed as is.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
 Given their relative Ludditeness I'm not surprised they didn't think of it, but it is possible to dynamically generate the right type of (hyper)text based on the target medium.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
 They could have their cake, and link to it, too, by specifying a print-only stylesheet. [span class="screen"][a href="http://news/story]As http://news/story]As the Boston Globe reports[/a][/span] [span class="print"]As the Boston Globe reports ([a href="http://news/story]http://news/story[/a])[/span] http://news/story]http://news/story[/a])[/span] And then hide span.print in browsers, and vice versa for print. edit: okay, I have no idea how formatting here works, sorry for the ugly links.
 - epochwolf 15y ago
 Direct link for your convince: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc Found it in the faq, enjoy. :)
 - pavel_lishin 15y ago
 Yeah, I saw that - the only real good option I saw was prefixing the HTML with the four spaces, but that would make the line unwrapped, long, etc... Sometimes HN's minimalism works great, and sometimes it's like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver.
 - BrandonM 15y ago
 What's wrong with this? <a href="http://news/story">As the Boston Globe reports</a> As the Boston Globe reports (<a href="http://news/story">http://news/story</a>) 
- astrodust 15y ago
 Of all the things they use, bitly is their choice? Idiotic. How hard is it for them to pick up the phone and get their own short domain service so that their news postings won't become useless if, for instance, Libya decides to can the bit.ly domain?
 - ramy_d 15y ago
 Exactly, for crying out loud their domain is http://ap.org http://ap.org and they couldn't figure to do http://ap.org/l/pDHZ6h http://ap.org/l/pDHZ6h how ridiculous.
 - k33l0r 15y ago
 Hell, they could have just subscribed to bit.ly's Pro or Enterprise service and used their own domain... Unless AP has some sort of agreement with bit.ly, this would seem to be a pretty big win for bit.ly. Lots of new visibility.
petervandijck 15y ago
omg you can LINK??
rglover 15y ago
Hm. Being that the AP is a major competitor for my current project (http://www.getconduit.com http://www.getconduit.com), I can't help but smile at this. In regard to the parenthesis, I can understand to some extent with printing of scripts and what not, but based on the original article here (http://bit.ly/nEmkQS http://bit.ly/nEmkQS <-- See what I did there), it seems like it was a lack of effort more than anything.
- joshu 15y ago
 thank you to the link to a sign-up page
zipdog 15y ago
I'm not sure if its a reason for their reluctance to do this earlier, but reporters tend to dislike updating their stories once posted (its better to write new copy), and links often have to be watched, because the serving site may change its urls or worse (if it were particularly annoying) place different copy at the linked page
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  And the different copy may include something that would look pretty bad for the linking party; e.g., "AP claimed they were linking to a Boston Globe story about the Tea Party, but instead it was something about a Lemon Party! And it didn't look like the kind of party I want to attend at all!!"
j_baker 15y ago
The publishers that use the AP tend to be deathly afraid of anything that might lead users away from their sites, so I'm not surprised to see that they haven't used hyperlinks until now. That said, I have no idea why they chose bit.ly, although part of me suspects this is some sort of covert advertising campaign that bit.ly is paying the AP for.
mrpollo 15y ago
they are probably using bit.ly because its hiding the domain name of the other sites, as to not give free promotion. LOL
afiler 15y ago
If they didn't put links in parentheses, they might break compatibility with teletypes! ...I'm not actually suggesting any newspaper still uses actual teletype machines, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are still plenty of workflows that evolved from teletype use. The teletype and Baudot code do have a pretty amazing legacy. Baudot code was invented in 1870 as a 5-bit mode-shifting character set. This, of course, predates data processing with punch cards (1889), alphanumeric data processing (1929), and binary computers (1937-1941). Even after the introduction of ASCII, the smaller Baudot character set remained a common subset available on a wider range of machines. This is seen in C's "trigraphs", where ??/, for example, may be substituted for \ on machines that don't support that character. Even the Apple II+ had a teletype-style keyboard, supporting only the characters found in Baudot code (the Apple IIe keyboard was the first to support all of the 7-bit ASCII characters).
senthil_rajasek 15y ago
AP is a co-op, From their about page [http://www.ap.org/pages/about/about.html http://www.ap.org/pages/about/about.html] "AP is a not-for-profit news cooperative" The techdirt article makes it sound like AP just figured out how to hyperlink. If you read the original article,[http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will-link-back-to-newspapers-who-get-scoops/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will-link-back-to-newspa...] its easy to see that that AP is proposing to link the actual story (scoop) from its member news organizations and only from their member news organisations. Running as a non-profit co-operative news organisation presents its own set of challenges other than just technical, I guess.

60 points by jsherry 15y ago

jhawk28 15y ago

They are most likely putting the bitly links in parenthesis so that the story can be printed as is.

w1ntermute 15y ago
Given their relative Ludditeness I'm not surprised they didn't think of it, but it is possible to dynamically generate the right type of (hyper)text based on the target medium.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
They could have their cake, and link to it, too, by specifying a print-only stylesheet. [span class="screen"][a href="http://news/story]As http://news/story]As the Boston Globe reports[/a][/span] [span class="print"]As the Boston Globe reports ([a href="http://news/story]http://news/story[/a])[/span] http://news/story]http://news/story[/a])[/span] And then hide span.print in browsers, and vice versa for print. edit: okay, I have no idea how formatting here works, sorry for the ugly links.
- epochwolf 15y ago
 Direct link for your convince: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc Found it in the faq, enjoy. :)
 - pavel_lishin 15y ago
 Yeah, I saw that - the only real good option I saw was prefixing the HTML with the four spaces, but that would make the line unwrapped, long, etc... Sometimes HN's minimalism works great, and sometimes it's like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver.
 - BrandonM 15y ago
 What's wrong with this? <a href="http://news/story">As the Boston Globe reports</a> As the Boston Globe reports (<a href="http://news/story">http://news/story</a>)
astrodust 15y ago
Of all the things they use, bitly is their choice? Idiotic. How hard is it for them to pick up the phone and get their own short domain service so that their news postings won't become useless if, for instance, Libya decides to can the bit.ly domain?
- ramy_d 15y ago
  Exactly, for crying out loud their domain is http://ap.org http://ap.org and they couldn't figure to do http://ap.org/l/pDHZ6h http://ap.org/l/pDHZ6h how ridiculous.
  - k33l0r 15y ago
    Hell, they could have just subscribed to bit.ly's Pro or Enterprise service and used their own domain... Unless AP has some sort of agreement with bit.ly, this would seem to be a pretty big win for bit.ly. Lots of new visibility.

petervandijck 15y ago

omg you can LINK??

rglover 15y ago

Hm. Being that the AP is a major competitor for my current project (http://www.getconduit.com http://www.getconduit.com), I can't help but smile at this. In regard to the parenthesis, I can understand to some extent with printing of scripts and what not, but based on the original article here (http://bit.ly/nEmkQS http://bit.ly/nEmkQS <-- See what I did there), it seems like it was a lack of effort more than anything.

joshu 15y ago
thank you to the link to a sign-up page

zipdog 15y ago

I'm not sure if its a reason for their reluctance to do this earlier, but reporters tend to dislike updating their stories once posted (its better to write new copy), and links often have to be watched, because the serving site may change its urls or worse (if it were particularly annoying) place different copy at the linked page

pavel_lishin 15y ago
And the different copy may include something that would look pretty bad for the linking party; e.g., "AP claimed they were linking to a Boston Globe story about the Tea Party, but instead it was something about a Lemon Party! And it didn't look like the kind of party I want to attend at all!!"

j_baker 15y ago

The publishers that use the AP tend to be deathly afraid of anything that might lead users away from their sites, so I'm not surprised to see that they haven't used hyperlinks until now. That said, I have no idea why they chose bit.ly, although part of me suspects this is some sort of covert advertising campaign that bit.ly is paying the AP for.

mrpollo 15y ago

they are probably using bit.ly because its hiding the domain name of the other sites, as to not give free promotion. LOL

afiler 15y ago

If they didn't put links in parentheses, they might break compatibility with teletypes! ...I'm not actually suggesting any newspaper still uses actual teletype machines, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are still plenty of workflows that evolved from teletype use. The teletype and Baudot code do have a pretty amazing legacy. Baudot code was invented in 1870 as a 5-bit mode-shifting character set. This, of course, predates data processing with punch cards (1889), alphanumeric data processing (1929), and binary computers (1937-1941). Even after the introduction of ASCII, the smaller Baudot character set remained a common subset available on a wider range of machines. This is seen in C's "trigraphs", where ??/, for example, may be substituted for \ on machines that don't support that character. Even the Apple II+ had a teletype-style keyboard, supporting only the characters found in Baudot code (the Apple IIe keyboard was the first to support all of the 7-bit ASCII characters).

senthil_rajasek 15y ago

AP is a co-op, From their about page [http://www.ap.org/pages/about/about.html http://www.ap.org/pages/about/about.html] "AP is a not-for-profit news cooperative" The techdirt article makes it sound like AP just figured out how to hyperlink. If you read the original article,[http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will-link-back-to-newspapers-who-get-scoops/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will-link-back-to-newspa...] its easy to see that that AP is proposing to link the actual story (scoop) from its member news organizations and only from their member news organisations. Running as a non-profit co-operative news organisation presents its own set of challenges other than just technical, I guess.