The Irish Times and the Irish Examiner don't use hyperlinks in articles and the Irish Independent links very rarely and only internally. Does this represent a failure on behalf of the newspaper industry to fully inform with their readership? Surely they should link to supplementary information which would give a more rounded understanding of the situation to visitors to their site.

I think the problem here is that the papers feel as if they are already providing too much content for little or no revenue online. This could be seen as extra work which they are not willing to do. It is also probably a contributory factor that the received wisdom is not to link to other websites for fear that your readers won't come back.

I'm not sure that not linking to other information is failing the readership. I think that it is incredibly easy to do a quick google search if the reader feels they need some extra information. I'm sure linking will become a bigger part of news website in general but I would be cautious as to just how much linking is included in each article. It could act as a distraction from the original story which would defeat the purpose.