[yesco]

> it brings in more money when site visitors click on links that stay on their site than when they click on outgoing links

As trust in journalism declines, I wonder if/when we will start to see a reversal of this?

Providing sources, and bragging about providing sources when other news orgs do not, seems like it would be a great selling point to a lot of people. At the same time, I would also bet that the vast majority of people would never check/click the sources if provided, especially if structured like a bibliography and pushed off to the side. Just the comfort of believing the sources are available would be enough to keep people coming back, meaning journalists would get to have their cake and eat it too.

[eru]

Many blogs already do this, and I've even seen it on youtube. Not sure if you call bloggers and youtubers 'journalists', though?

[yesco]

I think you could technically refer to them as journalists too but I meant the traditional non-independent kind. Honestly the rise of bloggers + youtubers providing higher quality well sourced content than the mainstream is partially why I think this might become a de-facto requirement to compete in the future.

[eru]

I'm not so sure.

Because those alternatives exist, people who care about that kind of sourcing will select themselves out of the audience of traditional journalism. That will leave that audience with less demand for such rigor.

(At least that's an alternative story you can spin. So we can't say a priori whether your narrative or mine would prevail, at least not without leaving our armchairs.)

[local_crmdgeon]

I'd consider any group of people that cite sources and report stories to be journalists.

It's a useful heuristic because in this case, it excludes Ars. Those go into the less prestigious category, "journoids"

[eru]

You can make up your own definitions of words, but talking to other people is gonna get confusing really fast.