I’ve often wondered – but why don’t many online main stream media sites link when they refer to blogs or websites?
I find it slightly ironic – particularly when they write about new media/blogging.
I’m not sure if it’s laziness, fear of losing readers from a site or if it’s just a different philosophy of web design – but I would have thought if a site was seriously interested in providing useful content for their readers that they’d hyperlink mentions of other websites.
Inspiration for this post – Business Week’s How Top Bloggers Earn Money (I resisted the temptation to just give you a dead link). Thanks for the mention in the profiles BW, it was a real surprise as I’d not heard anything about it until I saw Shoemoney write about it (he’d not heard anything about it either). I really should get a new set of head shots taken!
They are starting to more and more. I just saw this science article – not at all about web/tech – that references the power of blogs and links to blogs. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/science/24ferm.html?ei=5090&en=0547013c0c751b0d&ex=1342929600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1185325492-SmLdbjJaMoP4vyNWn17zPw
It’s not just about linking to blogs:
When will online MSM learn to reference their sources in general: press releases, studies, reports, … Most of it is available on the web, at least in summary format.
But don’t forget that the problem starts already at the big news agencies: those agencies provide all their stories without links: and yes, this is also a technical challenge because major news distribution software and exchange formats don’t support links.
A lot of work ahead ….
Darren, You’re the man, but I can’t believe you wrote “loosing readers” instead of “LOSING readers”. Haven’t enough people on the net misspelled “losing” already, ha ha. I expect better from you :)
Thanks for correcting it (loosing/losing), one less eyesore on the net :)