Newspapers have always competed with one another for the scoop and the right to boast that their newsroom nailed the story. But in the digital age, those rivalries may be fading away. The New York Times reports that several major publications will soon be linking to each other with the help of an Internet company which strives to structure information.

The Washington Post, The New York Sun and The Daily Oklahoman have joined forces with online news aggregator Inform.com. Soon, a box will appear next to the articles on these papers' websites with links to similar articles in other publications, or the links will simply be integrated into the text of the articles.

Perhaps most importantly, there will no extra work for newspaper newsrooms. Inform's technology automatically adds the proper links to the box and/or text by scanning for relevant words and continues to update the links as more information on a subject appears.

Whereas newspapers used to think that they had to keep readers on their site to maximize its potential, they are increasingly opening themselves up. By having other papers link to them, their traffic will actually increase because more people will be directed to their sites.

Such a strategy also helps newspapers compete with news aggregators like Google and Yahoo which have been successful at diverting online advertising money from newspapers.

Still, some papers are wary. The New York Times has no plans to join Inform and link to other papers. However, it will link to certain blogs through Blogrunner which it bought last year.

Source: The New York Times