A new element may be added to the five Ws of basic news reporting.
URLs, or addresses of Web sites, may some day become one of the facts — such as who, what, when, where and why — that reporters routinely gather, as automatic in the mind-set of newsgathering as phone numbers.
Many of the locally written stories that appear in the Akron Beacon Journal include links to relevant Web sites, and so do stories provided by wire services.
The appearance of Web addresses in newspaper stories was rare even five years ago, but now are so common that readers are starting to expect them.
That increasing prevalence was apparent in an e-mail from a reader who wondered why Web addresses weren’t included with two stories that appeared on last Sunday’s front page.
The reader wanted to know why URLs weren’t part of reporter John Higgins’ story about followers of the Right Way L.A.W. “redemption” movement and with a Chicago Tribune report on Web sites promoting anorexia as an acceptable lifestyle.
“Even a Net-newbie armed with the worst browser would take only a minute to pull up the Right Way L.A.W. site and any number of pro-anorexic sites,” the e-mail read.
True. Web addresses are one piece of information that readers can easily obtain on their own.
The newspaper is inconsistent in its use of URLs, acknowledged Mike Needs, director of Beacon Journal Interactive.
“Like everything that is relatively new, references to the URLs are more commonplace in stories written by reporters who actively use the Internet and used less often by reporters who are less comfortable with it.
“That’s changing.”
In the case of Higgins’ story, Metro Editor David Hertz said Web addresses were not included by the reporter and Hertz himself didn’t think about them when he was editing the story.
In the case of the story about pro-anorexic Web sites, URLs were not included by the Chicago Tribune wire service, according to copy editor Joe Kiefer, who edited the story.
Kiefer could have found URLs for the Web sites in question.
However, given the reported content of those sites, it would have been irresponsible of the newspaper to direct readers there.
“We would not include a URL to a Web site that instructs people on bomb-making. We don’t run pornography URLs,” Needs said.
Reporters and editors always make judgments about which details to include every time they write a story. URLs will be judged the same way.
