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Re:Why don’t journalists link to primary sources? by schwanksta on Saturday March 19, 2011 @02:08PM (#2344264)
Kleinmatic is 90% correct -- reporters are used to banging out copy, passing it to an editor, re-writing it, passing it to a copyeditor, re-writing that, back through the ringer, and passed onto someone they've probably never met who fits it on a page. They've never had to really worry about the presentation on the paper besides the number of inches and maybe worrying about a sidebar or illustration to go with it.

So in that sense, asking them to link -- a presentation function! -- is very new in and of itself.

But also, a lot of the content management systems make linking prohibitive. The version our reporters and editors see makes you paste it into the story as a plain, unadorned URL, bumping against the words you want to link. But hope there's no comma after it -- it's comin' with it. And if you need to edit those words, you might screw the URL with it.

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