It’s hard to deny CNN‘s ubiquitous presence but how many people actually consider CNN to be their primary news source? Admittedly, I would much rather check out the New York Times (I’m from NYC so it’s only natural) or a general news search such as Google News, where I can quickly find articles regarding one particular subject/event from multiple news outlets. However, for the next several months, I’m becoming a loyal follower of CNN.com in order to provide my observations and thoughts on its articles and other multimedia content!
Upon first glance, the layout of CNN.com is relatively clean and professional (as one would expect from CNN). Its trademark shade of red is prominent and its logo centered. Underneath the one photograph, one video clip, and one Obama advertisement on the top of the site, are picture thumbnails for news articles.
However, underneath those thumbnails begins a slew of text… and more text:
It’s not until you reach the very bottom of the website that you find the interactive media content, such as a “Quick vote” poll and an invitation to play CNN games. If you haven’t gotten distracted by any of the article links yet, video clips and television shows from CNN are waiting to be clicked on very bottom of the website.
While the homepage is a bit too cluttered, the pages for the news subcategories (e.g. U.S., World, Politics, Justice, Living, Health, Travel, Money) are much more visually pleasing as there are more images and photographs imbedded alongside their respective headlines. The headlines are concise but interesting enough to make me want to click on them and read the full stories. There is a range of news topics (from “Tech” to “Entertainment”) and each subcategory shows a good number of articles available.
The overall look of the website isn’t bad but some of the text clutter could be removed. If anything, it suggests that CNN does its job in reporting everything and anything. Future posts are going to examine CNN’s articles more thoroughly. Thanks for reading!
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