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I then for a moment realized the implication that this will mean transferring less PageRank to some other parts of the site that are doing well in Google, and whether this might negatively effect my SERPs for those sections? I of course realized that making *this* news available as a warning is more important than some possible minor negative impact in the next Google dance, and left it up. Pathetic though that I'd even worry about search engine implications when adding worthwhile content. :(
I think we sometimes get carried away when it comes to PR, true there are times when it can cause problems, but we need to know when is the time to be a great SEO and when is the time to be compasionate, you made the right descision.
Another issue though is one of legalities.
Is the report you uploaded in the public domain?
There aren't many news sites that take kindly to the duplicating of their copyrighted material.
This is an issue. One thing that likely limits this is I would wonder if some newspaper would want to actually sue a website warning kids that "drugs can kill" over a copy of a single newspaper report? Legally they might be able to win. But can you imagine the bad public realtions implications of this? Sort of like suing parents that passed out flyers warning about drugs to kids outside a schoolyard that contained a copy of a news report. One problem is these news reports go offline quickly, and thus no way of linking to them. 2 weeks ago I found a newspaper report of a teenage girl who apparently died from an OD of an OTC pill containing this drug. Apparently her mother even e-mailed me, because shortly after I found that I got an e-mail thanking me for my site, saying she found it only after her daughter died. The first name she gave for her daughter was the same as in this news report. :( That newspaper pulls all news reports off the website after 2 weeks. I did save a copy locally. There hasn't been a follow-up story, so I may have to contact the coroner myself to see if the toxicology results have been completed, and that this girl really did die from the pills that were found in a bag in her room. Because it is unconfirmed that she really did die of this drug, I can't yet add this to my website. However, if I do confirm this, shouldn't I include all the relevant news that was reported at the time? Although, if I do confirm this with the coroner I would likely write my own news report about it. I was the sole reporter of the first ever news report from a recreational OD death of this drug back in 1999. The local papers in a large urban US area didn't think some 18 year old guy's OD death of a little known drug was newsworthy. I found out about it when his sister first posted of it to a website bulletin board, and then told me the details via e-mail. I actually phoned the coroner, was told the cause of death on the death certificate was an OD from this drug, and then wrote the story and posted it to Usenet, and slapped it up my ISP webspace at the time. Basically, the reason I created a whole website about this early last year, with a paid domain name and all, was that there had been so many more deaths since that the topic deserved a site devoted to it. Sadly, the number of deaths seems to be going up. :( Well, I can't stop people from doing drugs foolishly, but they were warned, or had the opportunity to find the warnings.
