My reason for posting this is not so much the article (which is interesting in itself) but the inclusion of 3 references at the bottom. This is something I would love to see expanded in newspapers in general, regardless of whether or not the references are available without subscriptions etc. When I was writing english and history essays in university the requirement to footnote most - and in the case of history, basically all - references, facts and third party opinions, forced me to make my writing tight, my arguments clear, and my conclusions reasonable.
Of course references for everything are not possible, and often the paper is its own source, but where it isn't I think we can make improvements here.