This is something Toby noticed this weekend in the New York Times book section or whatever it’s called, but I figured I’d steal the idea and post it.

Our neighbor is out of town for three weeks and he said we could steal the papers that are delivered (and usually just left) on our shared stairs every morning. Toby grabbed the Times and read something about the various international book covers for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” That’s when she came across this piece of what she called lazy journalism:

The covers of “On the Road” shown below are taken from a fascinating Web page — find it by Googling “Jack Kerouac Book Covers” — maintained by Dave Moore, a Kerouac scholar.

Here’s the online version where the term “Web page” is linked to the actual site. Of course, that phrase wasn’t linked in the dead tree edition of the Times.

The Web address itself isn’t the easiest thing in the world to print (http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/jkbooks/), but telling reads to go Google something seems ridiculous. The site happens to be the first result, but who would know that since the Times didn’t indicate which of the 10 first-page results they were talking about? Also, who is to say that site will always be the first result?

The site also happens to be the first result for “Jack Kerouac Book Covers” at Yahoo and MSN. Ask users are out of luck as the site doesn’t seem to be in the top 10 for “Jack Kerouac Book Covers.”