Sakshi.com, the web version of vernacular news paper, has taken ‘link-baiting’ to abysmal low levels. For starters, Linkbaiting is art of crafting content with catchy/misleading titles so that reader clicks through the article. This practice is widely prevalent in web media to increase the number of clicks. Web readers are also used to this and have no qualms about this.
But Sakshi.com’s reporting of American director, writer Garry Marshall is completely obnoxious. As shows in the screenshot, Sakshi linkbaited with title ‘Happy days director kannumootha‘ implying the director of telugu movie ‘Happy days’ has passed away. While link-baiting these days has become acceptable in web media, this is a new low in reporting, that too from mainstream media. As Ramachrandra Murthy aka Raa.Moo. is trying to streamline Sakshi news paper by implementing guidelines, it might be worthwhile to review policies of Sakshi.com also.