Media stories for Friday:

Earlier this week Huffington Post featured a piece on videogame arcades from The Verge, snipping its opening passage (more than 200 words, a clip it later reduced) and sending traffic to that site through its own. The move prompted a complaint from The Verge that the procedure sapped some of the search engine recognition from its story and sent it to Huffington Post. Andrew Beaujon writes for The Poynter Institute that this dispute has important implications for publishers in an era of linked journalism and traffic-based metrics of success.

There have been two significant developments involving successful social media platforms that are aiming to broaden their appeal.  Twitter has introduced a six-second video application, Vine, that Reuters suggests is an indication that video is a large part of Twitter's future. And Tumblr has unfurled changes that TechCrunch asserts render it more like a fully-featured Twitter than a blogging platform. Each development also has implications for journalism.
 
 
It didn't take a fertile imagination to believe one day someone would be offered money to link to a company website. Such is the value of a hyperlink.

Now a Gawker.com writer has an offer in hand to indicate it's happening.

Hamilton Nolan has laid out the correspondence that indicates an advertising agency would pay him $175 to link to a website inside one of his stories. The agency suggests it has bloggers linking to its clients, including several prominent companies, for a fee.

In the hours since the story was posted, one publication and one client have denied they are associated with the practice.
 
 
The Supreme Court of Canada this week ruled that the presence of a hyperlink on a website does not confer legal responsibility for its content. It means that sites can link without fear they will be liable.

The ruling has been seen as a bit of a commonsensical acknowledgment of reality --- it would be quite difficult to enforce what happens in Canada and elsewhere as a cultural norm of the Internet --- but also as another effort to interpret the Canadian version of freedom of expression.

The Globe and Mail today offers a feature on the ruling and its implications for journalistic standards.
 

DA25E68FDEC14EAFA7B2A27D26C48058