The New York Times has rolled out a new feature that sees it linking out on its front page.

Times Extra adds related links from across the web using BlogRunner, the blog meme tracking service the Times acquired last year. As much as any one would appreciate a link on the front page of NYTimes.com, the links are displayed using a js embed, so unfortunately would appear to be blind to search engines.

Although linking out won’t fix the financial mess at the NY Times, it’s good to see them leading the way in linking out to other content, including news from their competitors, and may encourage other newspapers to do so as well. Good news for bloggers and new media companies, and only garden gnomes could think this is a bad thing. Now if only they’d drop registration to read….

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3. Google to Newspapers: learn how to use Robots.txt