New York Times Flags Print Edition Stories

The New York Times recently made a small, but important change to stories they post on their web site. If the story made it into print, at the bottom they include a tiny footnote that says where it ran and when. For example, the footer on this piece on video games notes: "A version of this article appeared in print on August 10, 2008, on page AR1 of the New York edition."

This kind of context is helpful not only for readers, but PR pros as well. The major monitoring services like Factiva tell you where a story ran, but Google News does not. Now it's easier to tell.

Most publications don't offer feeds for their print edition content. I wish they would. It provides context. The Economist is one of the few that does. However, at least for the Times, you can now you easily use Google News to build a feed for stories that they ran in print. Simply search for the phrase appeared in print. Then you can subscribe to the the RSS feed Google generates.

If you want, you can even get more specific - creating a feed for all stories that ran in print that are on a particular subject. For example, here's a search for stories about the Olympics that ran in the print edition of the Times. You can subscribe to the feed here.