N.Y. Times Incorporates News From Others… Sort Of

Starting today, the New York Times online edition is linking to stories from outside sources, including blogs. Sort of. Clearly nervous about sending you directly to news from outside sources — something that was verboten until now — the Times offers a link on its main web page to something called Times Extra. Clicking that gives you the same front page, but now each story has a suffix of links to other news sources’ take on the tale. So, for example, the opening paragraphs of the story on the cutting of rates by the central banks of Europe are followed by links to Forbes, MarketWatch, Guardian Unlimited, Seattle Times etc., with a link to even more takes on Blogrunner, a blog news aggregator acquired by the Times earlier this year.

Just in case this is all too giddy-making for the reader, there’s a link on the Times Extra page that will flip you right back to the good old hermetic front page. Moreover, according to ReadWriteWeb, the Times Extra page only remains valid for 24 hours, after which it reverts automatically to the un-extra version, and readers will have to click the link again to retrieve it.