JOURNALISTS WITHOUT A CLUE: An apparently endlessly continuing series. The Dallas Morning News is threatening to sue a site called Barkingdogs.org unless it quits linking to individual articles and starts linking only to the paper’s front page.

First, this sort of linking has been upheld repeatedly, and it’s key to the operation of the web.

Second, have you seen the lame, hard-to-navigate front page of the Dallas Morning News site? What do they think they’d be accomplishing — except to turn people off — by forcing everyone to go there first and then hunt for the story? Do they think that most readers will read the headline story “Plant Fire Near Houston Forces Evacuations” when they’ve actually come to the site to read “Church Takes the Lead in Head Start Projects”?

Next they’ll want to force you to read all the ads in section one before you’re allowed to turn to the sports page.

UPDATE: Reader D.F. Hawbaker writes from Dallas:

As a Dallas resident, you are so right about the DMN’s website. As with everything else in this city, they think they are God’s gift to journalism, the web, the world! It’s made worse by being the only newspaper in town. DMN has always had one of the lamest websites, but their egos refuse to get out of the way of improvement.

Write ’em and tell ’em. Personally, I think the commenter on Alice’s page is right: this hurts them more than it hurts us, since it costs them pageviews.