The Rule of Links

… Or: One Major Difference between Blogging and Journalism. From an essay by Dave Winer:

“Jon Udell wrote about the Rule of Links the other day, though not by name. He noted that professional publications usually don’t link to the subject of their articles, where weblogs usually do. He noted this in relation to the furor over a security whitepaper that got one of the authors fired. The professional articles didn’t point to the whitepaper, thereby clearly breaking the Rule of Links. If you’re writing about something that’s on the web, at any length, the Rule of Links turns from should to must. It’s disrespectful to your readers not to link to the subject of your article so they can form their own opinions.

The New York Times, always controversial, says it’s their policy is not to link, that their pub is self-contained and complete. This is total bullshit. While I love the Times, and have been reading it my whole life, I know that they’re crazy over there.”