Wednesday, March 03, 2004

For the class assignment:

I looked at cnn.com. I frequent this page daily (sometimes multiple times daily) for my news so it was interesting to take an analytical perspective on it. I would say that the site is aimed at anyone intersted in the news, mostly adults and likely educated. I would say educated because some of the material would not be understood by many people as it can get quite technical in some articles, though they try to write at a intermediate or elementary level. There is much more editorial content than ad content. I would estimate, on average, after venturing within the site into several categories that the average number of ads per page is 2-3. The site is much more useful for news coverage. There is not much background information provided in general. Most articles kind of frame the issue but do not go into much detail. I also noticed there were many different ways to get information: the traditional text, video feeds and soundbites. The site was VERY timely. I looked at it last night and they already had results up for Super Tuesday and extensive coverage in each of the states. Overall, I find the site very informative and perhaps, that is why I use it, in addition to cable news networks so often because they are timely and I can access them when I want instead of waiting for the 6 or 10 o'clock news. Another feature that cnn.com offers is email updates on new news so that if I am particularly interested in the War on Iraq or the Martha Stewart case, I can be sent emails whenever they write an article about the issue or there is breaking news. This also increases the timeliness of cnn.com's function.

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