Ottawa citizen actually posted the link to another newspaper in story about rape in Calgary

An ambulance attendant loads a patient at a playing field adjacent to Clarence Sansom Junior High, on 24th Avenue N.E. in the community of Pineridge. A girl as young as 12 was attacked, and possibly raped, in the northeast schoolyard just before the supper hour Monday as a group of youths looked on and took photos. Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Police+seize+cellphones+interview+drunk+teens+after+schoolyard+assault/3487713/story.html#ixzz0yritlkqi Photograph by: Courtesy, Global TV

It was a pretty ghastly story in the Ottawa Citizen. Some teenage boys in Calgary allegedly raped a 12 year old girl in the school yard while other children looked on and took photographs with their cellphones.

Police have detained one boy who appeared to be the perpetrator and seized cell phones from others. They may contain videos or pictures which could be evidence.

Alcohol was involved.  A mother in a nearby home witnessed the whole incident unsure what was happening and then horrified when she realized the young girl was being sexually attacked.

The Ottawa Citizen was covering the story from the Calgary Herald. In an unprecedented move for a newspaper, the Citizen printed the link back to other paper.

Picture caption is exactly as shown in the Ottawa Citizen

“http://www.calgaryherald.com/Police+seize+cellphones+interview+drunk+teens+after+schoolyard+assault/3487713/story.html#ixzz0yritlkqi”
Of course putting the link in the caption made it harder for someone to link back to the Calgary Herald but it’s a small step in the right direction.

Those newspapers have been stealing stories without attribution from the web for years.

Putting an actual live-link on their site just never happens. They papers think that readers will leave them given the freedom to do so.

Of course, readers can leave them at the click of a mouse anytime they like.

In future, the Citizen might think of embedding the HTML link properly like this – Calgary Herald. They might also put it at the top or bottom of the story, where people can see the source in one click. That’s the protocol followed on the Internet.

It’s a awful story but nice to see the newspapers joining the digital world of internet news.