There’s a debate raging about Knight Ridder’s decision (in its new content management system) to rot links to stories. Apparently this was motivated by a desire to get archive revenues for older stories.
Anyway, it’s interesting and useful to note that links to both New York Times and Washington Post stories are designed specifically not to rot and to be permanently in place. Just checked an old Boston Globe link (owned by the NY Times) — they apparently rot their links using the archive revenue generating strategy of Knight Ridder.