# Am I alone in hating the rise in video for online news? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 30, 2016, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798 "2016-06-30T18:05:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2016, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/61 "2016-07-02T04:06:53Z")
I do get a lot of news from [CNN.com](http://CNN.com). I mute the tab before I even type in the URL, then don’t look at the video only stories. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2016, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/62 "2016-07-02T15:09:19Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > I hate it, but I think it has more to do with money than with demographics. With a video, they can put a commercial in that you have to watch before you see the news you are looking for. With a story, no one forces you to look over at that ad in the corner, you can just go straight to the story. Also, posting a video does not require employing a literate person who can WRITE the story. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/63 "2016-07-05T23:15:29Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > The rise of the Internet means that straight news reporting (X happened to Y on Z date) has become a straight commodity. For any news story for which a video exists, there also exists a thousand purely textual accounts of that same story. If you don’t like video news, fine, go to any of the thousand other places to read your news. > > But it’s also meant that it’s pretty much impossible to make any significant money off straight textual reporting. As soon as you put out any kind of report, it’s reblogged and excerpted by a thousand different aggregators who you’re now competing with. Video at least provides the barest of a defensive moat. If I excerpt several paragraphs from your reporting without your permission and add the barest skeleton of connective tissue, that’s generally considered commentary and is fair use under US law. If I stitch together segments of your video and rehost it without your permission, that’s generally considered copyright infringement and you can send a takedown notice to remove it. > > Everyone here can relax and get their panties unbunched. It’s not that video is replacing textual news in any meaningful sense, all of the text news you could get before, you still can get. Rather, it’s that publishers are ceding text news to Reuters, AP and the thousands of aggregators that churn the stuff together and are focusing on video news as a supplement. Is there a way I can set the defaults in Google to ignore any search result that has video? ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/64 "2016-07-05T23:53:38Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > I honestly wish that there was a black & white bare bones zero graphic version of most news sites. > > Or… one news site willing to do just that while keeping journalistic integrity. Nobody needs to see dancing cowboys to know whats going on in the world… and that ‘one simple trick’ is to strip all the tacky bells and whistles crap off of at least one news feed. > > If you want it limit it to one view a day? Fine. I recall a _Doonesbury_ strip from the 90s. Mike has a tech firm that produces internet-ready software or something. A stern-looking software engineer (whom we have been given to understand is some kind of rockstar-genius and was hired very expensively by Mike) comes into Mike’s office to announce that he’s just written a utility that will cordon off all relevant and useful information from a webpage and discard the rest, so the user can read only what he can use. Mike: _And what will people find out about the webpages they visit using this utility?_ Software Guy: _That 99% of it is junk and fluff._ Mike: _And how much do you think people will be willing to pay to find that out?_ Software Guy: \*. . . \* Software Guy (leaving the office): _I’m on my break._ ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/65 "2016-07-06T13:36:32Z")
I know I’m late to the party here, but nothing makes me a cranky old lady faster than seeing some video autoplay on a website. I get all, “Oh, god, people can’t _read_ anymore, too damn lazy!” At home I have my browser setup to never run any videos embedded in pages until I expressly ask it to and a few still sneak through (somehow?). This causes me a few moments of inconvenience but I prefer to have to click “Play this” rather than have things autoplay. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/66 "2016-07-06T15:39:17Z")
Lots of incorrect assumptions in here. The people who publish news know very well that the audience prefers to read articles rather than watch videos. As **Shalmanese** points out, this makes it very, very tough to sell ads for text articles and since advertising has been a large part of the news revenue stream since the 19th century, they have to focus on what they can sell. The companies with smart managers that have influence are figuring out that nobody wants to watch a reporter spending 2 minutes on the internet doing the same thing they just did on TV. But they still need to sell video ads, so they are working on producing different forms of video – extended interviews, walkthroughs – something that doesn’t just duplicate an article in video form. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/67 "2016-07-06T17:53:59Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > Lots of incorrect assumptions in here. > > The people who publish news know very well that the audience prefers to read articles rather than watch videos. > > As **Shalmanese** points out, this makes it very, very tough to sell ads for text articles and since advertising has been a large part of the news revenue stream since the 19th century, they have to focus on what they can sell. > > The companies with smart managers that have influence are figuring out that nobody wants to watch a reporter spending 2 minutes on the internet doing the same thing they just did on TV. > But they still need to sell video ads, so they are working on producing different forms of video – extended interviews, walkthroughs – something that doesn’t just duplicate an article in video form. And the incorrect assumptions would be…what…? ---
**Author:** ![Buttercup\_Smith](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buttercup_smith/32/473_2.png) [@Buttercup\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buttercup_Smith)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/68 "2016-07-06T18:28:15Z")
I like most of you much prefer the text version of any news. If it is video I will just not watch it. I don’t get why The PTB don’t get it. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/69 "2016-07-06T18:29:44Z")
I would think that folks who use a cell phone to use the web would rather see video than try and read on a small screen. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/70 "2016-07-06T18:38:31Z")
_The Onion_ nailed this a couple of years ago: [Christ, Article a Video](http://www.theonion.com/video/christ-article-a-video-36101). (It’s a video, but at least it’s funny.) ---
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/71 "2016-07-06T18:51:40Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > _The Onion_ nailed this a couple of years ago: [Christ, Article a Video](http://www.theonion.com/video/christ-article-a-video-36101). > > (It’s a video, but at least it’s funny.) You’re right; they nailed it. I watched it, although I felt a bit played by doing so. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/72 "2016-07-06T19:10:50Z")
My guess, which is kind of similar to \*\*Shalmanese’s \*\*theory, is that what we’re seeing is a sort of blurring and convergence of what used to be separate information channels. Back in the day, you had radio, if you wanted to listen, TV if you wanted to listen and view, newspapers for extremely timely news (i.e. daily/weekly news) and magazines/books for longer-term information. Once the ecosystem was complete (i.e. TV was available) each of these filled a specific niche, and while there was overlap, it was complementary as well as competitive. So when you might hear a news blurb while listening to the radio about something that happened, watch the TV news story on it, read the newspaper article for a bit more detail, and then read a magazine article analyzing the event a month later. To a large extent the transmission channels were what dictated the format and the level of detail- the more up-to-the minute ones were TV and radio, with newspapers and magazines following, due to the limitations of the printing presses / layouts vs. live feeds/videotaped stories. Nowadays on the internet, there’s very little to distinguish say… NPR from CNN from USA Today from The Atlantic. All can have text, video, pictures and even audio if they so desire, and they’re not really bound by the strictures of their traditional distribution channels anymore, so they’re kind of fishing for a way to make themselves “sticky” and interesting to viewers. Since reading isn’t popular in the face of watching videos\*, they’re tending to go with that more and more. \*Sometimes videos vs text can be beneficial- I particularly like the YouTube how-to videos that show you the pitfalls and gotchas of doing DIY projects or fixing/assembling things. They’re often a lot more informative than the Chinglish and/or hieroglyphics sent as “instructions” in a lot of modern products. They’re even easier sometimes than looking at a schematic and text instructions of how to do something, like say from a Haynes manual. But for me, videos for news-type content is often deathly slow compared to just a graph or text news. I mean, if I want to get the weather forecast, I’d rather see a block of 7 rectangles with the day, the high temp, the low temp, and the % of precipitation listed. I can read that in a matter of seconds, while I might have to wait through some talking head yammer about high pressure zones and dry lines, and what-not before getting to how hot/cold it’s supposed to be, and how likely it is to rain and snow. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/73 "2016-07-06T19:16:42Z")
Then there are those asinine pages that load two or more videos or the same video in two places so you’ve got this cacophony of incomprehensible sound hitting you and you have to scroll up and down the page trying to find and pause the multiple videos all trying to play at once. And what’s with the popups saying “subscribe to our daily email updates!” Why on Earth would I do that? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/74 "2016-07-06T22:00:36Z")
I’ll ditto the OP. [CNN.com](http://CNN.com) used to be my go-to news source, now I don’t bother. Not only does the video annoy me, I need to (when I went there) wait out a video ad before I can hit “pause” on their video player so I can otherwise silently read the article. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/75 "2016-07-07T02:53:15Z")
You are not alone. Video is a pain. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2016, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/76 "2016-07-07T03:29:49Z")
Really, you’re all stopping at video? How about the sites that turn your sound back on if you mute it? Or the 3 bar videos with the outer 2/3’s blurred out? I killed 2 birds with one stone by turning off shockwave flash. No more memory killing video and a lot of the websites won’t run video unless I give them permission. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2016, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/77 "2016-07-07T04:22:21Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > I’ll ditto the OP. [CNN.com](http://CNN.com) used to be my go-to news source, now I don’t bother. Not only does the video annoy me, I need to (when I went there) wait out a video ad before I can hit “pause” on their video player so I can otherwise silently read the article. CNN is okay because at least they put a video icon next to the links so you know whether you want to skip it or not. Other websites don’t even tell you until you’ve clicked it and your eardrums are gone. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/78 "2016-07-07T20:55:23Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Or the 3 bar videos with the outer 2/3’s blurred out? I don’t know why those bother me so much but they do. I understand why they do it. The video was typically shot on someones cell phone in the portrait format and that doesn’t fit nicely on on a wide screen. So instead of showing black bars on the side they replicate a part of the video, usually zooming in on it, and put that on the sides while blurring it. Bugs the crap out of me. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/79 "2016-07-08T00:18:34Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > So who ARE these people that prefer video? There must be someone that does. Illiterates? I really wish there was a software like Ad Blocker that worked to keep auto-play videos both from playing and moving around your screen. The ones that do both are the worst - they know you don’t want to play them and the they move around to make it harder to turn them off. I also am not a big fan of slideshows, but mostly because there are so many that don’t work and crash a few slides in. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798/80 "2016-07-08T01:59:52Z")
The internet is a great medium for dispensing news. Unfortunately, it is often not utilized very well. One thing you can do with internet news that you can’t do with a newspaper or magazine is include video with your stories. Video can add a lot of depth to a story that mere writing can’t. However, it drives me crazy when the video is the only information! It should be a compliment to a written story–not the only content available! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-alone-in-hating-the-rise-in-video-for-online-news/758798.md?page=5)