Sunday, June 27, 2010

Headlines with Videos

Readers know I am a big fan of CNN.com headlines. When the story has or is a video segment, the headline is followed by a little video camera symbol. Essentially, there are two different types of video-headlines.

The first type is the "I don't think I really need to see that..." headline. This exhibited itself this morning, with "Mom has triplets at 66 - too old?" It's pretty simple - I really just don't need to see that. There really is nothing that you could put in a video that would enrich my understanding of the story more than words and a picture. Which brings me to the second type...

The second type is the "There's a video!?!? Yesssss!" This was finely exhibited with two excellent headlines this morning:
"Grasshoppers overtake cattle ranch"
"Robot lifeguard hits the beach"

THESE are the kinds of stories that need videos. First of all, because they are awesome. But secondly, there are just so many questions. How many grasshoppers are we talking here? Are they normal size grasshoppers? Any chance they could be trained to do farm work? On a scale of 1-10, how much do they resemble the grasshoppers from Antz? And this robot lifeguard: Is he human shaped, or are we talking more like a Roomba? Did someone really design a robot that can not only be in water without short circuiting but can swim and drown people? Is this taking place in New Jersey?

When there are so many questions, a video is necessary. So CNN: while you might be pushing it with the number of video segments, there are certainly headlines where I am glad they are there. So I really can't complain too much. Keep it up.

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