Every story in this paper has been made up to serve a liberal, anti-Greek and ASU-serving agenda.

Sound crazy? Like I’ve finally lost my mind? It is. And I’ll get back to you on that.

Common sense tells us that the lead in this column is false.

Now imagine if I said a new poll proves the majority of Americans want or do not want health care reform. Common sense would say, “Prove it.”

Unfortunately, that’s a difficult task at some news organizations because of the lack of outside linking.

Archaic linking policies have become scarcer, but the issue still remains here at many newspapers, including this one.

This Op-Ed piece by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, contains 22 links, eight of them going outside the nytimes.com domain.

I understand how small newspaper staffs are becoming, but it is not too much to ask to include one link in a story. If we accept showing the URL, it’s actually no work at all.

Showing the URL and using in-text links are both ugly. But the cosmetic sacrifice is minimal and worth the intellectual contribution that links bring.

On Monday, The State Press ran columns on religion online and journalism ethics in blogging. Two articles on the Internet had zero links.

That’s of no fault to them. The editors check the links to the referenced stories; like many others, they just don’t post them on the Web site.

This innocuous omission is evident at many newspaper sites. But it shouldn’t be made.

There is no single Web site that holds all the information of any particular topic. A fisherman cannot catch all the fish in the river with one lure. What do news sites think readers can understand about an issue like health care from one article?

I could selectively choose the information from a poll to support my point, when the total results of the poll might demonstrate the opposite. To prove me wrong, readers would have to try and find the exact poll I mentioned.

Conversely, links to relevant articles in a column augment the education of a reader on any particular issue.

The editorial board has decided not to include links, except for special cases, because we are a news organization, not a blog site. Column writing is semi-formal and links do not match that style. It is also impractical in the print version.

Does blue text damage a newspaper’s reputation? Linking enlightens readers to the full context of a column. Just because blogs do it doesn’t automatically make it unprofessional.

The paper version and the online version do not need to match. Newspaper sites have comments and slideshows, which are also not included in the print versions.

For years, it has been a practice to run columns that cite articles without a link. But the Web’s vast nature gives opportunity to provide a clearer lens of the world to our readers. We should embrace its connectivity, not shun it.

An online community edits Wikipedia for accuracy; insufficiently referenced claims are labeled with a “citation needed” — whether or not a journalist authored it.

If you’re reading online, you can reach Chris by clicking cogino@asu.edu.