At the Nieman Journalism Lab, Tim Windsor rightly questions the dearth of in-story links from mainstream media sources:

Is it stubbornness? Lack of training? Inertia? Not enough time? Back-end systems not optimized for linking?

Reporters blog. Reporters podcast. Reporters build mashups, tweet, create tumblogs, shoot video, host meetups. Everything but link. Why is the notion of link journalism still not taking root this many years into the transition from print to digital?

I have a draconian perspective on linking: Any reporter, editor or producer who is responsible for developing Web content, and who doesn't take the five minutes required to find and insert relevant hyperlinks, should be fired (or if you're not the firing type, reassign these mono-directionalists to static print products). The ability to create direct connections between far-flung content is the single most revolutionary component of the Internet, so why wouldn't you use it?

And I don't care if the half-baked WYSIWYG tool in your expensive content management system makes linking hard. Learn a little HTML and switch to code mode.

(Via Martin Stabe)

Hand-Picked Related Links

• In Praise of the Hyperlink
• Links: The Simple Solution for Context
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