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Last week, Publishing 2.0 noted that the New York Times was finally using hypertext links in articles in a meaningful way. Welcome to the 20th century, Grey Lady! The Times invested in WordPress, which is used for the site's blogs, but the rest of the product? That required an expensive upgrade to CCI NewsGate, which comes with a $40 million price tag and is "very time consuming to integrate, especially across multiple properties," according to an editor at another major market daily.

Previously, a Web producer had to intervene if you wanted to drop a link in your article.

It's how almost all newspapers are. They have publishing systems tied to the creation of the print product, with the web operations appended like some sort of added bedroom for the unexpected kid had late in life. Total Rube Goldberg stuff. A single publishing system that works for both platforms wasn't available until November of last year, and it's still pretty buggy (think first iPod) and around $40M.

A former Times insider says that the CCI upgrade was made not for links, though, but to enable later press deadlines. Whatever the reason for the software buy, the upgrade from the print-first culture inculcated by J-school professors and senior editors will likely take a lot longer to install.