Blogger Linking Conventions

I wanted to provide a quick link to a DailyKos post on blogger linking conventions. If you're wondering how bloggers get off pushing their opinions as news, its because good bloggers do their best to make sure their assertions are backed up by facts, and their opinions are clearly opinions. Reading blogs, you get twice the value for your money (still only $0.00!), you get news and opinon, in the same story, but clearly delineated with the use of block quoting (that's the indented text in postings used to indicate direct quotes from source materials, like below) and links.

Kagro X says it well.

Bloggers use links to give readers the opportunity to view their source material. When a blogger makes an assertion, you can typically check the validity of that assertion by following links to that blogger's source, and decide for yourself whether it's been properly analyzed.

When traditional media use links, they tend to point to that media outlet's collection of archived articles on the proper noun they've attached the link to. - Kagro X, "One quick note on Frank Rich"

Now, bloggers also link proper nouns to previously composed materials in the interest of providing context, but the "original source link" standard is the basis for all blogger authority. Our sources are right there for you to read, and we encourage you to draw your own conclusions.