Nah, I think it is very poor intelligence (by the end user). Whenever you place your mouse over a link, your web browser, in its lower left corner, will display where that link will take you.
That doesn't change the fact that the headline link shouldn't be that way. With regards to reading where links go, I rarely do that...what's the point? I know you would say that a link could go to some ad filled spyware bomb, but I mainly use Linux, so it doesn't matter to me lol. I suppose some people may be on 56k and want to really really make sure what sites they are going to via hyperlinks are sites they want to see because pages take so long to load, other than that, who cares.