Hyperlink to keep stories alive

Hyperlinks aren’t just a simple way to add interactivity and context to a Web story. They could also be a way for news organizations to keep users apprised of what’s new on a story without having to update the original. Robert Niles writes in the Online Journalism Review that hyperlinks could be particularly useful in crime and court stories.

If reporters at your publication routinely assigned case numbers to crime or legal beat stories, then readers could click a link from that page and access all the publication’s other stories on that case…Today, many jurisdictions post case files online, too. And that provides a way for readers to learn the resolution of cases that reporters might drop.

Even if the files aren’t online, Niles points out that including the case number or just its title will let users do the research themselves to find out what happened, even if your newsroom doesn’t track the story through to the end.

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