Missing Link

Some spare thoughts about Link, a newspaper that turned 20 years old today—but more or less changed my life. It's been 18 years, but I still miss that job.As I’ve written in the past, I look longingly at the era of the free daily newspaper. It was an era that represented much of my traditional newspaper career, and it’s one that has been more or less forgotten about by mainstream journalism.But I had the chance to work at three of them, one of which was among the largest of its kind in the country, the Washington Post Express. I loved that paper, though I admit that when I think back to my time in newspapers, I think about Link above everything else.Link, a publication of the Virginian-Pilot that began its life 20 years ago today, started with a provocative idea: What if you could take a 30-column-inch story and condense it into a 3-column-inch story? You could present the information in a new way, leaning on alternative story forms; you could make room for more visuals. And you could…