my $req   = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $link) or die $!;
  my $res   = $ua->request($req);
  my $html  = $res->content;

  # write_file() comes from File::Slurp
  # $item_id is the article ID extracted from <link>
  write_file($item_id,  {binmode => ':raw' }, $html);

  # Original source string looks like: 
  # <a href="http://news.example.com/?author=John_Smith">John Smith</a>
  my ($other, $author) = $html =~ /\?author=(.*?)">(.*)<\/a>/;

  # $author is blank, empty here, why?
  print "AUTHOR: $author\n";

  my $new_html = read_file($item_id);

  my ($n_other, $n_author) = $new_html =~ /\?author=(.*?)">(.*)<\/a>/;

  # Now $author contains the right name, "Mike Smith" for
  # example.
  print "AUTHOR: $n_author\n";