Old Media Is Less Likely to Link than New Media
The biggest culprit for not linking to sources, according to Anthony DeRosa at Reuters, is not blogs with all of their aggravating aggregating, but the Old Media.
Apparently the New York Post is a common offender. The Post has gone so far as to have allegedly admitted, by way of correspondence from one of their reporters, that they in fact have a policy to not credit blogs (or anyone else) if they can verify independently after they’ve been tipped off from the source they choose not to cite.
This strikes us as very bad manners. As a blogger, one learns pretty quickly that if you forget (or wrongfully deem it unnecessary) to include a link, the author of the source will notice, will tell you, and you will feel unprofessional/foolish when they do so. Best to avoid it altogether. The only people who apparently get away with this are old media outlets. Writes DeRosa:
Even here at Reuters, links are rarely seen, if ever, in the context of the articles we post. Felix Salmon recently referred to the Wall Street Journal as “the kid in class with his arm around his homework” in reference to their refusal to link. The New York Times is just as stingy with their links…
We highly doubt these practices will last long. More and more we hear about original sources standing up for their right to be linked, and this relic of pre-digital reporting culture will change, and change rapidly.
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Thanks to the blogger that sent me this. The NY Post, The NY Daily News and The NY Post all used my funny story re: 3 emails I got from gov. Andrew Cuomo thanking me for writing him signed Dave Patterson!
I think one paper gave a blogger friend of mine credit that I had also forwarded the emails to.
But even more darkly humorous is The NY Post banned me after unbanning me for in my opinion demanding they do more investigative journalism on Gartner’s role in Spherion CityTime and NYC gov in general. Who need the owner of The NY Post Rupert Murdoch and the owner of Gartner, Glenn Hutchins are on the Board for the Partnership of NY who want to be big time political movers here in NYC.
In the book City For Sale - Barrett and Newfield reveal that 50 news reporters at The NY Post handed Rupert Murdoch a signed petition protesting his biased reporting of Ed Koch. That was when Ed first ran for mayor way back when....