A Blog About Making Culture
Innovations in Journalism
February 16, 2004
Making the bold leap from merely waiting for Leander Kahney to watch Blogdex as this link rises, I'm actually going to try to make a Journalism Request: As mentioned by Matthew and Steven, the Yankees are promoting one of the clauses of their contract with A-Rod, that he's now able to link to the Yankees' team website.
Of course, this is an entirely worthless perk. I'm wondering how it became prominent enough in the contract negotiation to merit inclusion on the press release that various news sources, including the New York Times, are regurgitating.
Thus, I have a custom news story request for Wired News. Please dig into this a bit (not a lot, we're not bucking for investigative journalism here) and get a better explanation from some Yankees functionary who'll go on the record attesting to the fact that they don't understand that the "right to link" is worthless.
Thank you and good day.
Previously: Got Tix?
Next: I Told You We're Winning
hasan
This is simply comical! Just goes to show how evil the Yankees are. (Ahem, I am a Sox fan)
Felix
I puzzled over this too, and rapidly came to the conclusion that the NYT just didn’t understand the clause: what’s happening is that there will be a link from yankees.com to A-Rod’s site. Is my guess.
Chris
Good idea. I’ve passed it on to our online cousins…
Jay
Haha, fantastic. Linking rights…
Adam Trachtenberg
You’re not allowed to reduce the value of a baseball contact, so since A-rod agreed to defer money and otherwise accept less dollars in order to facilitate the trade, he had to get something of “value” in return.
A web site link is one of those things that you can pretend is valuable, but doesn’t actually cost anything. Thus, all parties: the union, A-rod, and the Yankess, are happy since they can all claim they’re getting something of value.
Well, that’s my guess anyway, based on paying attention to the Red Sox A-rod talks.
hasan
Adam I think you are right. Only the Yankees are evil enough to come up with these types of things to pull off the deal. Why can’t the Sox be this smart!
dj
I think the Yankees are also paying for his Typepad account, and they are writing a letter (on letterhead) to Google asking them to transfer all PAGERANK(tm) credits to A-rod.com.
Anil
Hey now, a TypePad account actually has value…
monkeyinabox
Is a-rod.com under the slashdot effect (so to speak)? Or maybe A-Rod had second thoughts about his badwidth bill before his first Yankee check clears.
Jordon Cooper
Or a more likely explanation is that A-Rod.com will have integrated Yankee content and have a profit in sales that they send that way.
Zach
Anyone up for Google bombing the Yankees website? That’ll teach them about web-linking rights.
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