Along with internal links in articles (links that only reference a story within a pub’s site) there are also those very nasty Intelli.txt links, which lead to advertising (they’re usually double underlined and in green if blue is used for internal links.)

Lots of folks have written on the trouble with Intelli.txt links, but there doesn’t seem to be enough consumer outcry to stop them. So, readers have to be careful not to end up at some sort of ad when they’re looking for additional information.

Further, Google recently knocked down in Page rank a number of newspaper and blog networks for the number of internal links, which Google’s algorithm reads as link farms. Yet I’m not sure the message has gotten thru to papers, although it may have to blog networks (haven’t checked recently to see if this is the case.) For some newspapers, and blog networks, hyperlinks outside their site are thought of as sending traffic away rather than providing more direct supporting information to their news story. Kind of sad that commerce, not the needs of the reader, end up coming first.