Is it fare for sites that publish material to change article text? They can cut off advertising parts and URLs, this clearly reduces value of published article for the company. It's a fair game - they need material, companies need space for publishing, so why is it last word always after them? Some texts are changed just a bit at first, but then other web-sites take material and change it again. After all article have not much to do with it's original.

Like title "Web Certain launches first multilingual SEO Forum" was first transformed to "English men launch first multilingual SEO Forum" ended up with "First international forum about internet search and search engines is launched" and the text was completely rewritten and reduced to one small paragraph.

Only a joke (sort of).

Every editor has different guidelines to the amount of words and type of content they will allow on their site.

One major advantage of the press release wire services that we use is that they do publish press releases fully, but news editors will make revisions.

The most common edit is to remove the hyperlink - that's why we always include the full web address as well in the text.

Our main job is to try and write so the message still comes across after the text has been cut. In fact - this is a whole topic on its own, so I'm setting up a thread in the Copywriting for Humans and Search Engines section.

If you're really not happy with the way something has been changed, you can try and contact the site that made the changes....

I can understand why they are cutting/changing text - they need interesting material to attract readers.
Still can't see what's wrong with links. If report is about website or a company that has a website - link can be very helpful for readers, and it's a most natural way of SEO as well.

Hope this doesn't sound like a media studies lecture.

1. News must attempt to be impartial. The opinions in press releases are paid for...

2. Most media outlets are funded by advertising. Links are currency - they do not want to give them away for free!

3. The whole aim of journalists is to keep the readers reading their stuff. "Stay with us, don't go anywhere else" is the attitude. This in-built trait means that many news sites will dismiss the option of including hyperlinks / urls instinctively. Newer news outlets do allow links (they know the benefits), but the BBC etc. never will IMHO - except to charities.

Although I see your point Anton and understand your frustrations, I can't see this attitude changing and we will just have to find ways to deal with it.