Cynical, yes. Accurate, unfortunately so. I worked for a small weekly paper for a number of years. Weeklies are still very community oriented and immune to many of the diseases that afflict large city dailies or national news outlets. Still, if you aren't selling advertising, you aren't in business, and advertisers don't want to see their ad next to something that either offends sensibilities or bores the hell out of readers.

You can wish it weren't so, or call it cynical, but that IS the reason they don't add a link to the source in the article. God help us all if people clicked away from the site, learned more about the topic than the reporter, or had the piece go over their head.