It is arduous to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re speaking about! Thanks…

Lunacy.

Can I pick you up on a few points here – some things I think you’ve misunderstood, others I disagree with.

Re: Professional sites rarely link out, you say. Firstly, as somebody who used to work for the BBC, we always made a point of linking out, where possible. ITV, another previous employer, are pretty decent at linking out as well, possibly because their web journalist, well, understand the web.

So if professional journalism sites rarely link out, my question is why? You can always include a nofollow link if you don’t want to pass on SEO benefits (The Guardian does this from time to time). What is the reasoning for not providing a hyperlink if you KNOW where the story comes from?

I take your point about stories rarely originating from the site that published them (and indeed made a point of mentioning this in the post). That’s fine, I accept that the industry is, sadly, geared towards this – and always has been to a point. It was the same 10 years ago, it’s moreso now.

I think you misunderstand the point about trawling the web for a link on every story. Fine, plenty of stories get passed around or come from multiple sources and it’s quite hard to pin a definitive originator. Nobody’s asking you to do this.

But where you know where the story originated from, and that one of the journalists in the organisation you work was the person who originally lifted the story, where on earth is the problem here? That won’t add 10% to your work. That’s just good practice. End of.

One other point around this – I’m assuming as this is a copy and paste job by a Sky journalist that they did a bit of fact checking, and checked the story was valid, accurate and stood up? And if they did, then surely it’s no trouble to provide a link to highlight the source?

You seem to think that hyperlinking is such a radical move for bloggers and shouldn’t be the case for mainstream media. Why is this? It’s fairly common practice across the web, both from bloggers and pretty major websites and established media companies. I’m failing to see that this is anything particularly radical or subversive. Why should Team Talk and Sky be above linking to their sources if, like Les Rosbifs, they’re pretty obvious?

As for the mobile claim, others have picked up on that, so I’ll just say – as somebody who does a LOT on smartphones every day, that’s utter and total nonsense.

What gives the media the right to tear this up and declare their own rules?

Oh, and if he could also kindly explain to me, an SEO, the difference between a link on a PC and one on a mobile device, that would be great. As it stands, I’m none the wiser.

I don’t like doing it but, with Pies, it’s a necessary evil to maintain cashflow – however meagre it may be. I’d hope that would be a motive that readers could understand and tolerate. This, to all extents and purposes, is my job.

As for yourself, I do hope you (and Les Rosbifs for that matter) keep going as I genuinely enjoy reading a proper writer sound off once in a while!

I think the point about ruining the relationship that Gav had built with Steve Mclaren is a very good one.

I’m sure that most football people would rather not be interviewed by “mainstream” journalists as they are well aware of the likelihood of their words being misconstrued (deliberately or otherwise) , leaving them reflected in a bad light.

If relationships such as this one were able to thrive and not be destroyed by the likes of Sky and Team Talk then those that are reluctant to speak their mind to the big media outlets would go to the bloggers for interviews such as the one in question here.

In turn, this would mean a better working relationship between the media and the people they write about as the large media outlets would find themselves isolated once the ‘responsible’ bloggers until they treated people like Mclaren with a little more respect.

The way things work at the moment is producing a race to the bottom where no-one wins.

An internet citation is a hyperlink to the original content. It’s a maximum of four keystrokes and two mouseclicks (or can just be four mouseclicks) and is certainly less work than having to argue about it later.