Why are so many online news stories in video format nowadays? And does anyone like it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m getting increasingly annoyed by the number of links I see on news sites to what look like interesting stories, only to find that they take me to a video instead of some actual news that I can, you know, read on the internet.

It seems to be happening more and more, and I just don’t understand it. I’m sure I’m far from unique in that I most often browse the internet in short(ish:p) breaks at work, or on the train on my commute. In neither of these situations do I want a video to suddenly launch and start blaring out of my speakers.

Usually these videos are not subtitled, so I cannot get any useful information from them. Even if they do have subtitles, I still have to sit and read it at the pace the presenter is speaking, which is always going to be far, far slower than I could read the text.

It’s totally user-unfriendly and yet it seems to be taking over. Soon there isn’t going to be anything left to read on news sites!

So why is this happening? The cynical side of me knows the answer to this already - so they can make people sit through a video advert before (or even during) the content.

But who the hell wants this? Surely it will just drive visitor numbers ever downwards?

Or am I truly in a minority and people would rather watch a tediously slow video than read a news item at their own pace?

2

I don’t know why this is happening, and I don’t like it one bit.

3

You aren’t the only one. I consider video or sound based articles the same way I do online ads. They are an annoyance and I actively avoid them. What really pisses me off is when I am really interested in topic based on the title and don’t realize it is a video until I click on it. I immediately hit the Back button and look it up elsewhere from a source that had the decency to write something if I still want to know about it.

I would say that videos appeal to lazy people that never read and only watch TV and movies but I don’t know that. Those types don’t surf news sites or information anyway and I have never met anyone that says they like watching videos over just reading an article with photos when it comes to news or real information.

4

We’ve had a thread on this before, and I and many others expressed our hatred of this.

I suspect some people actually do like watching the videos, but you won’t find many of them on a text-based message board like the SDMB. After all, plenty of people watch the TV news rather than reading a newspaper, magazine, or website.

5

I agree with the OP: I hate when I click on a link and it takes me to a video. A written article, I can scan in seconds, and read in less than a minute if I’m still interested. A video costs me 30 seconds of my life for a pre-video commercial, and then several minutes of the actual news video, most of which I probably don’t care about.

6

My approach exactly. Yahoo seems to be the worst offender on this front. I generally am able to find a text story elsewhere when this happens.

7

I’d missed that. What a lot of kindred spirits. :slight_smile:

It’s like being forced to share a book at school with the slowest reader in the entire class. Justgivemethedamninformationnowgoddammit!

8

Yahoo used to be my first stop for news. Their layout was simple, fast, and easy to use. With all of the changes they have made relatively recently I have found their site to be pretty much unusable. At first I dropped them down lower in my list, but now I don’t even go there at all.

9

I hate it, and I’ve changed my news sources to avoid it. I don’t even read entertainment news on Yahoo! any more.

I think it’s happening because many people either are incapable of reading or can’t be arsed to parse text. As usual, the mainstream news sources will pander to the slowest common denominator.

10

This Onion story, while nominally satirical, may shed some light on the issue.

11

I agree entirely with everything so far in this thread, even down to the details.

My opinion is that the Internet-using populace is getting increasingly dumbed down and these videos are just one notable manifestation. Note, similarly, the increasing prominence of celebrity and sport news and more celibrity news. I the increase of all this stuff and the dumbing down are mutually reinforcing – each is the cause of more of the other.

There is another problem with video news that isn’t new at all: A video news report, even on a typical old-style TV national news show, rarely goes deeper than sound bites. A few sentences, then a commercial, then the next news item. Occasionally there will be a 3-minute interview with somebody. A few in-depth news shows (like 60 Minutes e.g.) give somewhat fuller coverage, but even those are nowhere near print media.

We are becoming a nation, or perhaps an entire planet, of illiterates.

I think Shagnasty is right: “I would say that videos appeal to lazy people that never read and only watch TV and movies but I don’t know that.” Sudden Kestrel, above, says much the same.

At least three posts above mention Yahoo in particular. Let me ditto that. I, too, have largely given up on Yahoo as a source of . . . much of anything. (In a recent Pit thread, I also agreed that their e-mail service has gone to shit.) Even their plain-text articles, the ones they write themselves, are no more than capsule summaries of news they must be copying from elsewhere.

My strategy: When I see a headline that catches my interest, but it’s just a video, I copy the headline to the clipboard. Then, in a new tab, I Google that. This will usually bring up plenty of other sources.

12

But how is that “appealing to lazy people”? Videos are more effort, by an order of magnitude, than simply skimming a piece of text. You have to wait for the video to load, then you have to wait for an advert to finish, or, if you’re lucky, be able to click past it after a few seconds. Then you have to wait wait wait some more before you actually get any information.

How is that any “easier” for lazy people?

13

If you’re the type of person for whom reading is hard.

That said, I think it has more to do with collecting page views and advertising dollars, and less to do with what people actually want to look at. My (admittedly vague) understanding is that videos bring in more $ per view than text articles do, so you don’t need nearly as many people to click a video in order to make money from it.

14

Because actually reading requires the reader to think, the hardest activity of them all!

Citing Sudden Kestrel again (emphasis added):

ETA: And on top of that, as I noted above, a text article contains a whole hella lot more information to be parsed, than does a typical video.

15

This is one of my main annoyances with CNN.com. At my workplace streaming video is filtered out by policy, so I’m unable to see about half of the articles on CNN. I wouldn’t mind nearly as much if they had a video on the page but also had a transcript or summary in text, so that I could read the article.

16

I don’t like watching news videos either, for what it’s worth.

17

As I noted twice already, I think even that’s not good enough. The PBS web site, in particular, commonly posts transcripts of their live interviews. Invariably, these are highly superficial and perfunctory, just as the original videos are. There is no comparison, in general, with a (hopefully well-researched and reported) text article that was written to be a text article in the first place.

18

Personally I find it much harder to concentrate on a video than on text. Especially a moronic “news” video interrupted by adverts for incontinence pads.

19

I hate these too, I’d much rather read it.

20

Count me in. What really pisses me off is when they make no indication that the link is going to be to a video. If I knew that, I wouldn’t bother.