I too agree with the OP. It’s especially annoying for those on metered accounts or with limited bandwidth. And they have a 15-30 second advertisement beforehand.
You are not alone, I hate it too. Give me articles, internet, not videos, when it comes to news.
Clearly, their research didn’t include asking the Dope! Maybe a younger demographic wants their news via video (which doesn’t give me much hope for the younger demographic).
I, too, would much rather read.
It’s both these things. In a communications class I took about a year and a half ago, we were told that a) the young 'uns (in this case those age 25 and under) often prefer watching videos online over reading text, and b) it is another way to force people to watch ads. So I guess some content providers consider this a double win.
Since this was a graduate class aimed at working professionals, there was no one 25 or under in it, and the general opinion about this development amongst the class was pretty negative. Those with kids, however, said their children do indeed spend a lot more time than they do watching videos of all kinds.
I wholeheartedly agree, for numerous reasons:
[ul]
[li]I can read much faster than a talking head can read a story to me. Also, the vast majority of news videos are short and full of fluff. I can read the same amount of info presented in a typical 3-minute online video in about 30 seconds, and a written story usually contains far more information. [/li][li]I’m either in a quiet place where I don’t want the audio to disturb others, or I’m in a loud place. Either way, I need to put earbuds in to hear the audio, which is a pain in the neck.[/li][li]The video usually takes forever to load, and is frequently preceded by a 30 second ad. They also chew up data.[/li][li]The video is likely to either not load or crash my browser, especially on my iPad or iPhone. (This is also true with websites full of other crap on the page.)[/li][/ul]
A couple of years ago, I used to regularly read news online on CNN.com and MSNBC.com. Both are almost completely worthless to me now.
Now I find myself usually reading BBC.com or TheGuardian.com.
Yep, I agree.
Video = Entertainment. For this, video was invented.
Back in the 60’s, the New York Times once ran the transcript of the CBS Evening News, in toto.
It took about 10" of single-space column.
I can’t decide which is worse - the slow pace of video (a 3 minute video to include an 8 seconf video (and the video WAS the story) or the huge verbiage being written about a factoid that could be expounded, in much greater detail, in 300 words.
“Click here to read more” - and that is after enough verbiage to have told the story.
And gawd help the fool who clicks - prepare to be bored to tears looking for the actual story lost in a sea of “get paid by the word” text.
Luckily, I’m old enough to have heard all the “News” at least twice before.
“Nothing new under the Sun”…
I’ve been to Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq so I can safely say without hyperbole that video news (especially autoplay) is 10,000,000 times worse.
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.
I don’t like to watch videos - I’d rather read a story. In fact, on the rare occasions when I do watch a video, I have to turn on my speakers. I prefer quiet computing. So hush! 
I not only dislike video news online, I also dislike slide show news. When the story is headlined “Average Tax Bite per State” I want to see a list of the states with typical taxes paid in each. I don’t want to have to click through 40 states to discover that mine is indeed in the top 10.
What I find even more annoying is the sports sites, where I go to see the latest sports scores on games in progress, and I have to wait for their featured video highlights to load before the scoreboard appears.
But I understand why they do this. Most of the news/sports internet sites are sources that also have TV networks as their big revenue taps, and they are pitching their TV video.
http://deslide.clusterfake.net
Works pretty well, though not with all sites.
I have almost zero interest in any video online unless I go to youtube. And if I go to youtube I’m more likely to download it and run it in QuickTime player instead. Web browsers aren’t very good video players and streaming video sucks.
Can you give me an example of these thousands of website with text-based content?
Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but what I find is just enough text to drive search engine results, with lots of video content. Other than pay wall sites, I’m not seeing a lot of good text content.
I agree completely. I can read a story much faster than watch a video. I’m 67.
This seems obvious to me-- LOTS of people are going to be looking at news sites on their phones, computers, kindles, etc. in places where they can’t have audio blaring out.
Of course, the SDMB is not a representative sample of the world at large. We are much smarter, better looking, wittier, more literate, skinnier, have better hair, and cuter dogs/cats/children, and are just generally more darling than the <fill-in-the-blank> that comprise the “world at large.” You knew that already, didn’t you.
Video is slow and loud and awful.
Thanks for your input. Either we are a much more discerning bunch than whoever the target audience for news media is, or the people in charge of news sites are clueless.
oh whats worse is the slideshow from some place like answers.com…you click through 3 pages of ads for 4 lines on what ever it they suckered you in with
I’m another one fed up with video “news” and autoplay. Pretty much all my pet peeves have been covered already in this thread.