[TomGuy]

If this battle falls in favor of the commercial media, the Free Republic will die.

Not at all true.

If it came to that, the resulting solution is relatively easy, though somewhat cumbersome:

Simply have 2 browsers open side-by-side. One pointed toward the article. Since it would be open to the original source, that original source has no complaint. The other pointed to the forum. The article could still be discussed, dissected, and skewered.

It is a work-around solution. The link from the forum can easily be modified to open the "linked" article in a new browser (TARGET="_blank"). Ms McDonald sounds the death knell based on a lack of her knowledge of web technology.

[StriperSniper]

That ignores the archiving function of FR to insure that the history of some of these things are preserved. If all you have are links, links go dead, then the discussion is much less valuable without the source material.