[…]I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.[…]…

- I agree that outbound linking doesn’t directly affect SEO. But if your pages are more useful to others, well, they’re more likely to link to you, which does affect SEO.

– A note on the Wikipedia linking policy for those who might not be as deep into this as you and I. Wikipedia does not discourage external linking when used to cite sources. In fact such links are in principle required for every factual statement. The policy you referred to says, “The subject of this guideline is external links that are not citations to sources supporting article content.” As I’m sure you know, Wikipedia articles are chock full of external links for source citations. Sadly, the same cannot be said for mainstream news reporting.

– “Sources and access are the only competitive advantage that journalists possess.” I can think of several others, including subject expertise and the ability to get something published in a prominent place. In any case, I do expect journalists to show me their full sources. I as a reader may be able to listen to the conversation that the Times reporter had with Marissa Mayer, but she won’t answer the phone for just anyone.

Also consider that anyone could do what e.g. Politifact does, but very few people do. Doing something consistently and well has value even if you’re not the only one who could do it.

Thanks for responding,

– Jonathan

Unfortunately, outbound linking doesn’t have the impact on SEO (search engine optimization) that Steven suggests. In fact, the NYT and WSJ have the right business strategy for traditional newspapers online. Linking to their own articles improves their ranking in search engines, based on the search algorithms of Google and Bing. Their teams of SEO professionals are among the best in the industry.

Wikipedia has rather severe restrictions on external linking and actually discourages the practice within the body of an article, where the anchor text would have SEO value. Here’s the : http://bit.ly/drHHl9

Who does Wikipedia recommend NOT linking to?

“Links to blogs, personal web pages and most fansites, except those written by a recognized authority. (This exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria for biographies.)”

Wikipedia article writers most often link to newspapers, magazines, academic journals and the mainstream media.

Per Wikipedia, “Self-published media—including but not limited to books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, Internet forum postings, and tweets—are largely not acceptable.
Self-published material may in some circumstances be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so. Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer.”

I have to agree with Frank that the BBC has no choice but to function as a hub or window on the web given their government funding and competitive strength. Most breaking news is essentially “duplicate content” on the Internet. The BBC can’t compete globally for breaking news with Twitter, bloggers and citizen journalists. For-profit media conglomerates have no choice but to fire staff, as ABC did, and share news resources, as CNN/CBS often discuss.

Sources and access are the only competitive advantage that journalists possess. If Google decides to give a search engine story to the New York Times first, the Times is not going to link to Google’s yet-to-be published blog post, or a digital recording of say, Marissa Mayer’s phone conversation with a reporter, including the reporter’s questions.

Google will eventually post the news in greater depth than the Times website will. It’s not realistic to expect journalists to give away the only thing they can sell to us.

I’m much less cynical about Steve Herrmann and the BBC News website’s efforts to crowdsource their linking policy. They’re being transparent and open about the process and have encouraged debate about the Link Economy. That’s a good thing.

Sites which are deemed by Google, Bing, and the other search engines as being more relevant appear higher in the search results and therefore receive a much higher percentage of traffic from those search engines. So when the BBC sends some clicks away to other sites, it is likely receiving even more clicks from the search engines. Clever. Very clever.