There has been an ongoing debate between Felix Salmon, a blogger for Reuters, and Henry Blodget of Business Insider, about the quality of the content of BI and the rules about linking to outside sites to credit them for content to which they refer. It is only fair to note that Salmon has criticized the quality of 24/7 content as well.
The linking issue is not just one that pertains to blogging rules.
Reuters.com may be the least generous of all large news sites in terms of giving links to its sources.Reuters.com often refers to “sources” in its headlines, but almost never mentions the names of those sources until readers click through to the story itself. There is a fine example on Reuters this morning about a dispute between JPMorgan (JPM) and the FDIC. Reuters acknowledges that the source is The Wall Street Journal, but does not link to the Journal website. And Reuters does it everyday, particularly with stories from Bloomberg and The Journal.
Reuters may have one set of rules for its bloggers and another set for its newsroom. That is too bad. In the online information business it is hard to see why there should be any distinction.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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