It is a policy that will surely lead Haymarket Publishing and Hort Week to a weaker position in the market place...it is a decision that will deprive their readers of accurate information.
An article on today's Hort week site explains that Honey Fungus is the RHS's top disease for 2009. There follows information that is a cut and paste job from the RHS site - part of that info says: "There are no chemicals available for control of honey fungus. If honey fungus is confirmed, the only effective remedy is to excavate and destroy, by burning or landfill, all of the infected root and stump material."
I left a comment pointing out that I didn't believe this to be correct and linked to an article on Landscape Juice from 2008 - the article is based on research I had conducted whilst trying to understand what control methods were available to gardeners.
I didn't consider it to be advertising but important information for the gardener - clearly, Hort Week were happy to trust the RHS and cut and paste the info without question but they weren't happy to allow someone to point their readers in the direction that calls their information into question...surely journalists should check their facts?
It's not the Honey Fungus story that is the problem here but the fact that Hort Week are acting as a web policeman.
Removing web links to external sites is an unsafe practise for a web-based business - it's not the first time it has happened to me; Stovin Hayter sent me an email once before calling my out-link 'blatant advertising' - is it just because it's Landscape Juice or would they do it for any other site?
Google has made its fortune by linking out to other sites so I suggest Hort Week take heed...otherwise, readers might vote with their feet; and this is something Haymarket couldn't afford to happen.
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