PiPress timestamps fail

The St. Paul Pioneer Press has added “online @” tags to its stories, two of them today — one was online at 4:18 p.m., the other at 2:34 p.m. The three other stories on the page did not have tags; perhaps they weren’t online.

I love timestamps, but this isn’t the logical use of them. Why point out that the stories in the paper you just picked up — might even be looking to buy — were available online more than 12 hours ago? And free somewhere else? I’m sure the paper is trying to promote its Web site, but this method just screams “old news!”