Posted by Eugene Volokh: How About Some Links? http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_15-2009_02_21.shtml#1234851630
The [1]L.A. Times covers the [2]lawsuit against L.A. City College for a speech professor's refusing to grade a student's in-class presentation. But how about a link to the [3]Complaint? This Complaint, after all, includes not just the student's side of the story, but also some pretty useful supporting documents (including one that strongly supports the "professor ... allegedly told him to 'ask God what your grade is'" statement). Wouldn't some readers find it useful to see this? To be sure, the link wouldn't help the print readers directly, but aren't quite a few people reading newspaper stories online these days? Note that the story actually includes a link -- to an L.A. Times article on a tangentially related subject. Why not a link to the underlying documents on precisely this subject? Even print readers who are interested in such supporting documents could take advantage of the online links, by simply finding the online version of the story. And even people who don't follow the links might find the story more credible if it provides the links. How hard would it be for the newspaper to actually give interested readers such raw material, rather than expecting them to rely solely on the newspaper's necessarily highly abridged account? References 1. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-speech16-2009feb16,0,1480666.story 2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_15-2009_02_21.shtml#1234851253 3. http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/LopezComplaint.pdf _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
