CNN

So I'm not much of a news kind of person, but after looking around CNN.com I noticed a lot has to be said for the news and the CNN's website itself.

One of the main things that I think CNN.com does well, and that I like a lot, is the fact that it reports on almost everything. When you first go on the site you see: HOME, WORLD, US, BUSINESS, SPORTS, ANALYSIS, POLITICS, LAW, TECH, SCIENCE, HEALTH, ENTERTAINMENT, OFFBEAT, TRAVEL, EDUCATION, SPECIALS, AUTOS, I-REPORTS. I think this is great for one site to have because you can simply go to one place for all the information you need on almost any topic. I think CNN.com makes it easier for people searching the internet for news related material because they have everything in one place, people do not need to go to several different websites to get different kinds of news. CNN.com, I feel does this very well. And also, the fact that there is a lot of useful information on the site is something that CNN.com does very well.

However, I do feel that there are some things that CNN.com does not do well. One of those things is the fact that I feel that CNN.com is a lot like CNN on television and that it repeats the same news stories over and over again until something new happens. I think when a news station and its website is doing that that people will be less likely to visit the site or even the television station. I know that I myself am like that. I like to get the news of the day, or if its a big event of the moment, and continue on. I don't want to see, or in the case of CNN.com read the same news at night that I read earlier that morning. Another aspect of CNN.com that I think it does not do well, or rather I should say that I don't like is the fact that there are advertisements on the page. I know advertisements are important in their own way, but I feel for a site like CNN.com which is solely news bases why does someone need to know about Netflix. When I first went on to view CNN.com that ad itself distracted me from digging deeper into the site. In fact, it made me think to myself how I have to update my own Netflix list.

At first, not knowing that much about CNN.com I did not think that its readers could participate with the website. I thought there was very little to no interactivity on the site. But CNN.com proved me wrong. On the bottom of the site there is a button that says "Send, Share, See YOUR Stories on CNN.com" I like this a lot because it gives the readers a voice to what they think and feel to the issues that surround us in our world. But on the downside to this there are only two stories underneath that people looking on CNN.com can view. I think it would increase more interactivity if more clips, stories, and photos were shown.

As far as links are concerned I noticed in a few stories that came from the Associated Press, CNN.com had a direct, I guess hot link, to the Associated Press's website. In another story I also noticed that it had a direct hot link to Pfizer and to charts that could be found on CNN.com itself. So yes, I would say that CNN.com does link other sites within their own site. Not only do they link sites but they also have links for the advertisements that can take its viewers to the exact site of the advertisement. For example, the Netflix ad. If you click on it, it will take you directly to Netflix.com. So, I guess that in itself is a form of a link.

CNN.com does use multimedia as a way of reporting news. They have plenty of videos that relate to many of the stories they feature as top stories and most popular stories. I also noticed that on the site it had CNN (Pipeline) which offered "commercial free videos" on a variety of news stories. So I think that yet again, there is a good and a bad to this. I think it is good because it gives people who may hate reading the chance to see and hear the news without having to look at the television and save time. But on the flipside, I think it is also just repeating the same news over and over again which could be a little redundant.