Out of habit, I tend to go to CNN.com first to get my news online. This is a habit that I am quickly breaking, thanks to CNN.com. For the past few months, CNN.com appears to be making a concerted attempt to combine the hard hitting news of Access Hollywood with the editorial opinions of your most annoying and close-minded uncle (in their case, Uncle Lou). Hoping to read the latest on the natural disaster in Bangladesh? Well, they don’t actually have a front page story on that. Looking for news the latest scandals involving the Hooters in Hoboken? You sir have come to the right place.
I find it very interesting to compare CNN.com and Foxnews.com with the New York Times online, LA Times online, etc. Basically, online these are direct competitors and yet the content they present is so strikingly different. Is this because newspapers can simply put online stories that have already been written and so the cost for them to present informed news and opinion is much lower than for their competitors from TV? Or is it because both types of website are simply reflections of the medium from which they were created?
The top headline on CNN.com right now is that TV’s Mr. Whipple has died. I do not know who Mr. Whipple is. While my heart certainly goes out to Dick Wilson’s family (he apparently played Mr. Whipple), I don’t really see this as nationally relevant news. Now, obviously CNN tailors its content to maximize its readership and the simple truth is that celebrities and news of the weird sells. But it sure makes the singling out of Fox News (whose website is just as bad, by the way) seem a little hollow when CNN.com touts Larry King’s interview with the plastic surgeon that operated on Kanye West’s mother.
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