In this case, I have taken a story from the NY Time and added hyperlinks to the sites it mentioned.   I've linked to Yahoo pages which have additional sites illustrating the phenomon discussed in the article.  This, I think, makes the story more interesting than the original Times version which lacks hyperlinks.

Of course, you should write your own essay, not take one published elsewhere -  all material used from published sources must be cited as such or you have committed plagiarism.

This essay is 1700 words, which is longer than we have asked you to write.  It is an acceptable model for a hyperlink essay.  Try to make your essays interesting, more like a New York Times article than an article in a scholarly journal or a traditional term paper.

       On Web, Voters Reinvent Grass-Roots Activism

        By LESLIE WAYNE  -  New York Times, May 21, 2000.

            By day, Pamela Sybrandy
            works as a nurse in San
        Diego. But in her free time, she is
        a cyberwarrior for Al Gore. Part
        of a growing band of grass-roots
        activists, Ms. Sybrandy has set
        up a Web page -- with no ties to
        the Democratic Party or the Gore
        campaign -- to promote Mr.
        Gore's views on family and
        children's issues.

        Until now, Ms. Sybrandy's only
        political involvement was to
        gather bumper stickers and
        buttons at the local Democratic
        headquarters. But this year, she
        said, she looked at her political
        participation and decided to
        "kick it up a notch" and create a
        site (www.all4gore.com) to
        promote Mr. Gore in a way that gave her more clout.

        In the 2000 election, such independent and home-grown
        Web pages, created by individual voters with some
        Web-design skills and a little spare time, are
        multiplying exponentially and now number about 6,700.

        Often rivaling the sophistication of the official Web
        sites of political parties and candidates, these
        grass-roots Web sites are a new way for ordinary
        voters to engage in the political process -- a high-tech
        version, many say, of putting a sign in a voter's front
        yard or a bumper sticker on a car.

        "It's kind of democracy at work," said Eddie Mahe, a
        Washington consultant and former deputy chairman of
        the Republican National Committee. "Historically,
        those same things have been said in every campaign.
        The difference is that they used to be said in a bar or at
        the corner coffee shop. But now, on the Internet,
        everyone has a megaphone."

        In their unorganized way and by their sheer numbers,
        grass-roots Web sites are challenging the traditional
        role of the two political parties and individual
        candidates of controlling their own messages, to direct
        grass-roots activism and to orchestrate the rhythm and
        pace of a political campaign. If the 2000 election is the
        one in which the Internet meets traditional campaigning,
        it is also one in which politicians are sorting out
        whether this grass-roots cyberactivism is a friend or
        foe.

        "Politicians don't know if this will be a benefit or if it
        is where they start losing control of their campaigns,"
        said Ari Schwartz, a policy analyst at the Center for
        Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit organization in
        Washington.

        As of last week, 3,775 home-grown Web sites had the
        Bush name in them and 3,066 had Mr. Gore's name,
        compared with virtually none containing candidates'
        names in the last presidential campaign. Not all, of
        course, support one of the two candidates. Some praise,
        some mock, some parody and others simply repeat
        much of what the two candidates have said or post
        news articles about them from other sources.

        So far, the Bush campaign seems to have suffered the
        greatest sting from parody sites, particularly over
        questions about whether he used drugs.

        The Bush campaign, in fact, tried to restrict one
        scathing Web site, www.gwbush.com, arguing that the
        site should be regulated as a political committee, but
        the campaign's complaint was dismissed last month by
        the Federal Election Commission.

        "It's like someone walks down the street at lunch time
        and yells at the top of their lungs that a presidential
        candidate is wrong or unattractive," said Robert F.
        Bauer, a lawyer for the Democratic Party. "The
        candidates cannot demand a retraction or make a
        citizen's arrest. This is not different."

        For the most part, however, these sites are earnest
        efforts at political activism and, because of that, they
        raise a number of tricky issues. On one hand,
        grass-roots Web sites represent a wellspring of new
        activists for candidates and parties to tap, especially
        when so many political observers have lamented a
        decline in voter participation.

        But this new medium also creates a series of what-if's
        for the parties: What if a well-meaning Web site
        contains information the candidate or party believes
        misrepresents it? What if confusion arises between
        official party and candidate Web sites and grass-roots
        ones? What if some of these Web sites contain links to
        groups on the far right or far left that a candidate would
        rather not be associated with?

        And, even more basic, what if these Web sites begin to
        shift political power away from candidates and parties
        and to individuals with a large electronic presence?

        "Until now, guilt by association was a very effective
        political weapon," said one Republican Party official.
        "On the Web, heaven and hell are only two clicks
        away. To criticize a candidate for something on a link
        that is three or four sites removed from his own Web
        page will be problematic for every political player on
        the Web. They are all going to face it."

        Makers of these Web sites do not see their activities as
        a series of what-if's, but rather as a chance to
        participate in politics -- in their own way, on their own
        schedule.

        "If my site was run by the Republican National
        Committee, they'd be saying, 'Do this' or, 'Don't say
        that,' " said Travis Main, a computer technician in
        Eugene, Ore., who set up www.voterepublican.net. "I
        wanted to be involved promoting Republican
        conservatives. But I didn't have the time to get involved
        with the parties or be an activist in that sense. The
        Internet gave me the opportunity to be active and work
        at it on my schedule."

        Starting last August, Mr. Main, who works in a bank,
        started putting in six to seven hours a day on weekends
        and at nights building his Web site. Now, he has about
        1,500 visits a month and he has cut his work on the site
        to an hour or two a day.

        The site has a cartoon logo of a smiling elephant
        cradling a baby elephant swaddled in an American flag.
        It contains a directory and links to conservative
        Republican Web sites and to a wide array of
        conservative publications and groups. It also posts
        letters from viewers and holds some discussions on
        conservative issues.

        "The thrust of our site is to provide information," Mr.
        Main said. "There is all this information out there and
        voters can have a choice about what they want to gather
        and how they want to act on that. Before, they just had
        to rely on the local party or reading newspapers."

        On the other side of the political spectrum is Robin
        Orlowski, a junior at Texas Woman's University in
        Denton, Tex. She runs the PioneerGrrrl Web site,
        which contains essays by Ms. Orlowski supporting
        Democratic and female candidates and attacking the
        Republicans. It also has links to pro-Democratic sites
        and anti-Bush ones.

        Ms. Orlowski plans to participate in more traditional
        campaigning this fall, but she sees her site as a way of
        expressing her liberal views cheaply and in the spirit of
        free and open debate.

        "These sites will increase democracy in the long run,"
        Ms. Orlowski said. "You don't have tightly scripted
        campaigns as the sole voice. You will have
        independent citizens voicing their opinions in a way
        they couldn't before. It's because the Internet is dirt
        cheap and it costs money to print campaign materials.
        The Internet is a great free opportunity."

        And as Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore know well, it also
        provides an opportunity for critics to exploit their
        foibles. For instance, www.all gore.com, recently
        featured a parody of Mr. Gore saying, "Elián can live
        with me." And anti-Bush Web sites like
        www.georgybush.com feature parody songs in Spanish
        and English that can be put on CD's for distribution.

        The Gore campaign has tried to take a low-key view of
        the sites that make fun of Mr. Gore. "We try to keep a
        good sense of humor about them," said Todd Webster, a
        campaign spokesman.

        Moreover, the Democratic Party has taken a page from
        the parody book and brought forth a number of sites
        mocking Republicans, among them
        www.MillionairesForBush .com, and has picked up
        some material from a Comedy Central Web site that
        makes fun of Senator John McCain of Arizona and
        linked it to the party's own site (www. democrats.org).

        Even if much of the material is in jest, however, the
        creators of these parody Web sites say their intent is
        serious. "We will play a small role in the campaign
        because there are many people coming to our site and
        who have heard what I have to say," said Zack Exley,
        creator of the gwbush.com site, which he says gets
        300,000 to 500,000 visits a month. "I am trying to make
        some points that have not been made in the mainstream
        media."

        In a join-them-rather-than-fight-them effort, the
        Republican National Committee has decided to
        improve its own Web site -- it has 10 percent of the
        150 staff members at its headquarters devoted to
        Internet campaigning -- so that voters might be more
        inclined to visit the official committee site
        (www.rnc.org) rather than to drift into unofficial sites.

        And the party is making banners, logos and other
        material available on its site for supporters to
        download onto their sites. In addition, the national
        party is sponsoring a workshop -- "Winning in a Web
        World" -- in June to help party organizers and
        grass-roots supporters with Web campaigning and
        design. The party is also putting large disclaimers on
        material on its Web site, so that if it is lifted by groups
        the party does not approve of, a message comes up
        saying the Republican Party does not endorse the
        content of any other Web site.

        On the Democratic side, the party is asking the
        Commerce Department to see whether official Web
        sites for federal candidates should have a separate
        domain suffix -- .elect or .pol -- to differentiate
        themselves from unofficial sites. This request was
        made after a grass-roots site said that it was an official
        Democratic site and began to collect campaign money.
        (The site later disappeared.)

        "We see the Web as the best campaign tool since the
        phone and the television," said Larry Purpuro, the
        deputy chief of staff for the Republican National
        Committee and head of its eGOP project. "We don't see
        it as a foe or a threat, but as a great opportunity. We've
        said, 'It's digital or die.' If we don't embrace, exploit
        and learn from it, we could be displaced in lots of our
        activities."