CNN was the site where I got my first taste of what the web could offer in 1995. I was hooked from the moment I saw a photo – an actual photo! – of the Motorola cycling team taking part in the Tour De France.

I still read CNN.Com but I do find that the current trend of putting stories in video (lots of time, hassle and advertisments to reach the content) has destroyed the immediacy that was the hallmark of the site for so many years.

Too often these days I go to a competitor site to get text based news, insight and commentary. I know there is a balance to be struck – and video is where it is at just now – but I’m sure the balance is not right at the moment.

Good luck!

Anthony

The changes look good to me and I think they are a real improvement. I just ask that you keep in mind, during your beta work, that not everyone in the world uses the Microsoft operating system, nor Microsoft compatible applications.

Millions of us out here grew tired of malware infestations, instability, insecurity and many other issues and moved on to other computer operating systems. Most every webmaster seems to realize that, but there are a few who do not. I hope you will.

I’m a loyal CNN News fan, but I’m even more loyal to my Linux operating system. If a site is not Linux friendly, I’m moving on and finding a new “favorite news website.” I’m not changing operating systems. Millions more feel the same way.

Please, just keep us in mind during your beta work.

Thanks,
Stan Kain

Odd how this all seems like the ever-evolving and shifting (and “personalizing”) data mining operation that U.S. businesses rely on to perpetuate themselves (read: make profit).

That said, the design is artistically exquisite. It is simple, easy, high-contrast and yet tasteful. It seems essentially neutral in color (Compare to Fox’s website), which reminds me of the BBC.

I love the new CNN.com web page, but could you guys add some color?? It looks to “white” some a nice blue hear and there would help.

Please keep the categorized story headlines on the main page (legal, international, etc.). It is a big time saver. I will not click through to independent pages to get all to the categorized content…and I’m sure that there are others like me. In general, I want to see most of what you have to offer on the main page. I go to CNN online and t.v. for an overview of the worlds news.
Thanks for reading my comments.
Josh
Seattle

The new CNN.com Beta doesn’t make it through my workplace’s firewall although the current version does. I get the Beta’s page frame, but no articles. Too much technology?

At home, I can see articles on CNN.com Beta only if I shut off the firewall running on my work laptop. CNN video has always been like this. The difference with the new CNN.com Beta is that our workplace firewall is stopping whatever’s feeding the articles as well.

As CNN.com is set to my homepage, if you don’t fix the new CNN.com, I’ll be forced to switch to another news provider when the Beta goes online full time.

Many of us wish to scan the newest news articles quickly, while we are on a break at work. The practice of making more and more of CNN’s articles as ‘video only’ has unfortunately led me to switch to another service. I would guess that as more content is moved to video only, usage of the CNN website will go down.

Every article that is to be published as video ought to have a compulsory text-only link along with it. That would be a good compromise.

-Randy

The new format is pretty bad. The information that is available on the current page is now hidden and more difficult to access. I read this site just about every day, and the new format will encourage me to look elsewhere

I’m pleased to see you took into consideration your elderly demographic (that’s what we call sarcasm here in the Bay Area). I’ll be 77 years old next month. Would it be too much to ask to increase the font size from 6.5 to the typical 11 – 12?!? Frankly I think the new site needs a lot of work. It’s clear you have chosen the path to cram as much content (some senseless and some informative) in the space you’ve allotted yourselves. I can’t see myself keeping CNN.com set as my homepage once you make the switch to Beta. Sure there are positive changes however the overall taste that’s left in my mouth is equivalent to, what my granddaughter refers to as, washing Doritos down with milk. If that doesn’t leave an unappetizing imprint on your cranium I’m not sure what would.

The new format seems to be in keeping with modern “Web 2.0″ trends which tend to favor appearance over usability. I don’t know what to make of it myself. Be careful of emphasizing multimedia over text, we’re not all going to be on high bandwidth links all the time and we really don’t need a talking head to read the material for us. You might want to go easy on the Javascript as well; I notice you’re using Prototype and Scriptaculous (great libraries but not necessarily the best), they’re going to tempt you to load users’ computers down with redundant software that looks OK for the developers but is going to not play well on many people’s machines.

Get rid of video only news. Have a text-link so that I can read it as fast or slow as I want. I do not want sound blaring out of my laptop and I want to READ, not watch. If I want to watch, I will turn on the boob tube, not the internet. As for when I do want to watch video, I admit I have not checked out to see how compatible the beta video is with firefox, but foxnews video is horrible; msnbc is great; current cnn.com is okay but nothing special.

ALSO: See comment # 5: “Please keep the categorized story headlines on the main page (legal, international, etc.). It is a big time saver. I will not click through to independent pages to get all to the categorized content.” I ADOPT THIS STATEMENT COMPLETELY. I will NOT click through to see categorized content. You will lose me as a viewer very quickly if I cannot scroll to see this rather than having to click.

Javascript is not permitted in the internet zone on my system due to security concerns.

Due to the large number of third party ads from untrusted sources, CNN must remain in the internet zone.

Flash will never be installed on my system.

As far as I’m concerned, you have disqualified yourself as a news source.

I too have loved CNN.com for its clean, crisp presentation of the news. I’m most concerned about what seems to be the floating left margin in the beta version. Sometimes, the left margin will change locations during a paragraph. I appreciate picutres and realzie that adds must be used, but I find a hard right margin much easier to read. As mentioned before, CNN.com has always done an excellent job of presenting a clean, easy to read website. I’m afraid this may be going away.

The new website seems bland and lifeless. Articles that use to be easy to view and access the most recent news for, are now buried in links, slowing what I want to view down.

If you want to truly make it personalized, allow the user to see the ‘top stories’ in the first half of the web page, then on the bottom allow us to choose the stories we want to view.

For example, if I only want Entertainment and Tech links, those would be displayed at the bottom along with their most recent articles.

Sincerely,

John D.
Chicopee

I agree with two of the comments above: the first is to keep the categorized stories. It really does help me see “what’s going on” at a glance,

The second is to please — PLEASE — don’t move towards more video content. I realize that this has been your ‘business’ on TV, but if a story I find here is compelling, I will indeed then turn to CNN-TV. But I *don’t* want to destroy the non-linearity of the text which allows me to quickly scan through an article in favor of a sluggish delivery of less content. You can’t hyper-link video, either!

I do like the relatively clean look of the new site. thanks!

While you are changing the website, could you add a mini-mode to the CNN Pipeline webplayer? The new site does look good, but your old site is one of the best and the easiest to navigate news portal out there.

Comments 5, 7 & 8 express my concerns exactly.

In addition, I am also concerned about the proliferation of ads which seem to have turned CNN.com from a news site with some advertising to an advertising kiosk with some news; worse, some ads, like NetFlix, are so resource-demanding that my PC’s overall performance drops noticeably when they are running. Consequently, I recently made the NY Times site my home page, but I still keep coming back to CNN.com., partly out of habit, but also because it covers more of the news that I am interested in. Hope that much doesn’t change.–WEB

Sorry, its not strict…but nice to see some web standards. still looks like poop though,

Like most people/organizations in our society, it looks like CNN has gone ahead and eliminated “Education” from its list of important topics. Bravo! Hoo neads eddukation any way wen weave got paris hilton too keap us entertaned?

As a teacher, I am offended by your decision but am hardly surprised. There were probably very few of us that used your portal to read about the latest education news. Thanks to you, now there will be none.

I am now looking for a new online news source. Any suggestions?

William Rollinson
Cambridge, MA

Where are the catagories??? The previous site was very intuitive and frankly I don’t see the need to change.

Changing functionality and look & feel at the same time is not a particularly smart idea! I like the current layout and color and don’t see why you are changing to these irritating red tabs that don’t look like tabs for your top navigation. Good luck!

I agree with Randy MacKenna–when I’m at work, I often read the news over lunch. There are often some interesting headlines on CNN.com that are video only. Since I work in a cubicle environment, I don’t want to disturb my neighbors, which leaves me two choices:

1) Try to dig out and connect my headphones (which is a pain)

2) Try to use Google News to find the same story in text form (which is what I usually do)

Like Randy, I think you could keep more readers on your site by posting text versions of all stories. (Or, at least, make it possible to turn on closed-captioning in your video stories.)

I like the new site, and I REALLY like the process you’re going through to design and test it–it’s great to see a real world, high profile example of user centered design.

Ian

“There’s been a large technology team devoted to this project, and it’s fair to say there are well over a hundred technologists involved and hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have been written over the course of many months.”

Isn’t this a little bit much? You’re redesigning a website, not launching the space shuttle. And what do you have to show for all that “work”? A page that’s whiter and plainer and less organized than the previous one, but still works the same way: you click on a link and read the story. Talk about overkill. Sometimes, less is more. I also agree with Anthony that having to wait for commercials to see a video is not as good as just reading the story. I may have to switch homepages too.

A) What’s wrong with Web 2.0 designers that they can’t build a variable width web page? Come on folks, unless you suck at web design its the easiest thing in the world.

B) Go take User Interface design 101. The page is way, way, way too busy.

C) Have you tried surfing the page without javascript? Guess what? It doesn’t work. Your justification for requiring javascript to read text is what again?

Your grade so far: D-

I don’t like the new format either. I find it difficult to read as it all seems washed out. I miss the ability to see all the stories at a glance. As mentioned above, we won’t take the time to click deeper and deeper to find content. As it is now, I rarely click on video stories. I have Pipeline but the thing takes forever to load.

I, and I suspect others, come to CNN for a QUICK glance at the news. I do this several times a day. I expect CNN to be uncluttered and without gimmick. Please don’t try to be hip and trendy. If I wanted YouTube, I’d go to YouTube…

Candace
Florida

Artistically the page looks fine. It is cleaner and less cluttered, but it is filled with too many ads on the front page. It looks more like a pennysaver for your programs than it does a news site.

News sites are supposed to inform us. CNN.com has always been my first place for news, but it will change if I have to go clicking this and that just to find the main headlines. As a graduate student, I don’t have time to go hunting for my news, it needs to be there.

I agree with the other users who want fewer video-only stories. They take too damn long to load the video, even with broadband. Who wants to wait 30 seconds for a video to load, plus being forced to sit through a 15 to 30 second commercial before you get to the story? Just let me read the story, please!

Also, keep the different topic headings with several story headlines under each one on the main page. I won’t spend the time to click through to half a dozen other pages to see what stories you have to offer. I’ll just go to MSNBC or the NY Times instead.

Finally, stay away from coding everything in Java and/or Javascript. It is way too slow on most PCs to be worthwhile. I hope you try using your Beta website with a lot of 5 year old PCs to see how well it works before you think its ready for prime time.

Finally, I think your old web site is just fine and doesn’t need changing. I think CNN hired a few too many web page designers who decided that they had nothing better to do and in order to keep their jobs they should redesign everything even though it didn’t need it.

The site is much cleaner. It was tough at first to realize where the categories were as I am a person that looks at more news. There seems to be a focus on CNNs programming more than the news, especially world news.

CNN.com has always been my definitive news site. It is my homepage and will continue to be. I understand the work involved to renovate a site so congratulations on being close to the end of your process. I do like the larger list of current news items and have always liked the big red news alerts. What I don’t like about the beta version is that the rest of the stories are scattered all over the site. You have to hunt for ‘law’ or ‘entertainment’ stories, for example. I liked before that the lesser stories were all bunched to together so you just had to do a short scroll and everything was right there. It only took a glance to get the gist of the news. Now it looks like everything is somebody’s column or you have to click to get the news. Not sure that’s good. I’m sure you’ll make it great though.

Thanks for trying to revise your site. I agree alot with what the previous two people stated. Videos with ads ahead of them are a non-starter for me and unless I reeeaaaallly want to see a certain thing, I won’t take the trouble. Also, nix the big flashy video/ads on the top right hand side–they are annoying and distracting. Your former site was basically an billboard with news sprinkled around it.

Finally, with your new beta site, try to stick to news–just news. Tell us what, from a serious and journalistic standpoint we need to hear about. Don’t simply declare whatever has the greatest potential to grab eyeballs as “news.” Again, I don’t care about Rosie O.D. or about what Alec Baldwin said on the phone–that’s stupid stuff–don’t clutter the pages with it. Get down to the serious task of identifying, discussing, what we should know about and deal with. Make it important, even if it is not popular.

Good luck,…Alan

OK…

1. Drop the videos. They are time consuming and contain very little of value.

2. Keep the old categories. I am not going to spend time searching for something.

3. Follow web standards.

4. Never do another story on Paris, Rosie, etc.

5. While the page is cleaner now, that only means there is less info on it, and I don’t want to be scrolling all the time to see the top page.

Many site designers seem to think that making people scroll down 2-3 pages to get to the information they need is appropriate. Computer monitors are getting wider yet web pages are getting longer.

It’s pretty, but not very usable. Also like someone else said, removing the categorized story headlines from the main page is a big no no.

NO, NO, NO.

CNN.COM BETA SUCKS!!! BIG TIME!

The key to success in the Internet (after sponsorhip) is CHOICE, CHOICE and MORE CHOICE.

Your IDIOTIC Beta-site shows that when it comes to technology and user preference, CNN “does not get it”.

Granted that a change is needed and you need to evolve (some may disagree with the change part), but it should ALL be about viewer’s choice, NOT about making choices for the viewers.

A SIMILAR format to the current one, but incorporating choices would be more productive:

1) Depending on where I am, I may select Plain Text, HTML with graphics, Multimedia with Audio, or Video for the SAME STORY. A small symbol next to the story should let me choose what is my preferred delivery at that time (plus a default preference, if I click on the title)

2) Headliners and Summaries of stories are GREAT. If I am short-time, I will read/view ONLY the things that interest me, if I got some extra time, I may read/view additional stories IF I SEE THEM. Some people like to customize their home page to only those subjects they like, others (like me) prefer to keep it full of categories, so that occassionally I can explore other news…

3) Last, the time and connectivity factor. Many times, people look up something interesting that they would like to read, but when they go looking for it later they can’t find it, or some read an interesting article and try to find the data a few months later… good luck!, or they have connectivity for a limited time and would like to read the article later on when they have limited or no connectivity. The solution: an option to click to download/save the page article, WITHOUT a lot of advertising graphics (if they are downloading, they already saw the ads…)

Three things to remember: USER CHOICE, USER CHOICE, USER CHOICE and don’t be so arrogant as to make decisions for the readers & viewers… if you do, you will become oblsolete in no time, and there is no quick way back from that position, it takes many years to recover.

A concerned reader, who made CCN his homepage from the begining.

It would appear from these comments that CNN.com’s readers are a good deal more mature and technologically conservative than their Skittles-consuming Web developers. Microsoft made the same sort of mistakes when they tried to add keen features to Hotmail, like those animated icons that every serious business requires.

Unlike your developers and their supervisors, most of your readers are still newspaper-oriented. We read. The newsreaders who read the stuff on the videos work from a script, so that is probably what you should be placing alongside the videos.

CNN videos tend to crash my old system, so I generally avoid them if I’m in any sort of a hurry. I have no objection to any of the advertising; we all understand that this is what pays for the service. It would therefore be helpful to everyone if you could figure out better ways to add advertising content to your print stories.

Like alot of others have said, the new site looks bland. The one feature that I enjoy about the old site is that I can see the top stories under each of the categories at a glance. The new site has them buried behind links. If the site stays this way, I’m going to have to switch to another news service. Also, to reiterate what others have said, the gravitation to tons of video only content is going to cause me to look elsewhere for my news. I check your site at work several times a day for the most current stories, but don’t have the time to sit through a video. I’d much rather be able to read the story at my pace than have a video feed.

I like the new look – it’s much cleaner than before, and I appreciate the local news and weather section. But what happened to the QuickVote poll? Not that I’ve been able to use it for the last 2 weeks – I keep getting a 404 error when I try. Are you getting rid of it? I hope not.

I really want to chime in on the video comments. Until just recently I was on dial-up. Now I’m on satellite, which is much faster, though still not up to cable speeds. I came very close to dropping CNN as my home page because of all the video links. I couldn’t use them at all with dial-up, and when traffic is high I have glitches even on the satellite feed. Add to that the fact that I’m stuck with satellite IP’s accursed Fair Access Policy, which limits my daily download volume, video feeds are a pain in the fundament. I *cannot* emphasize this enough – please, *please* put a text link with every video you have.

Finally, I loved the post from William Rollinson. It’s funny and sad at the same time. The apparent and abominable lack of education I encounter daily on the Internet is alarming.

Thanks for letting me share.

Mike
Tennessee

Great job! Love the new site…. and everything finally lines up correctly in non-mainstream web browsers.

As many others have mentioned before me, you need to work on a few things:

1) Either take out some of the video or give option for text or video. I have had to change my homepage at work to Foxnews.com because I want to read the news and we are not allowed video. This is very frustrating when I think I am opening an article and next thing I know, I am trying to shut down the video before my IT department catches it.

2) The beta setup is not user-friendly.

3) Keep the quick links to topics. The quicker we can move to what we want, the more we will stay at your site.

I agree with the other comments about video news. I have even been a subscriber to the Pipeline service, but often it takes to long to load and watch a video only article. There really should be an option to read a text based article. I have gotten into the habit of simply ignoring video-only links.

Looks great. Just keep out the annoying flash adverts. Don’t turn my computer into a television unless you ask me. Thanks.

The new format reminds me a lot of the BBC site. I like it though, its a lot less cluttered. Please find a way to fix the problem of watching the news videos on a mac. I’ve tried d/l windows media player for mac but for some reason the cnn videos didn’t recognize that its on my computer no matter what I tried. Maybe add two different options to videos: windows media player and quicktime.

I agree with the users who have already posted the two most common complaints:
1. stay away from too many videos or at least provide a text version. there are many stories that i’d love to view but cannot as i am checking from work. at least provide a text alternative.

2. keep the categorized stories at the bottom. i, too, like the at-a-glance convenience and not having that will detract me from viewing cnn.com as i do not have time to look at individual pages.

From reading all of these comments and from my own personal observation you guys need to bring back the news links for individual news categories like entertainment, education and sports.

There really should be an option to read a text based article for all vidio news. I also have gotten into the habit of simply ignoring video-only links. Also, where has CNN Weather gotten too? The old version just seemed more user friendly

I would agree with most of the above posters.

1) Too many video only stories. I always have to go to an alternative news source so I can read the story and avoid long loading times and advertisements.

2) Although I found the categorized “more stories” section on the new site, I much prefer the previous look. It was very clear and easy to access. Skipping through to find health, sports or education sections are annoying.

3) I would prefer the local section (weather and headlines) to be nearer the top of the very long homepage.

4) The colors are so neutral that they are not distracting, but it is rather bland.

I can get over 3&4 but, 1&2 will be dealbreakers pretty soon.

Now I understand the changes, at first I thought the changes were just in the design. However, I would opt that there’s an even proportion of video and text news, i.e., readers/surfers would have the choice to see the video (for those who have access to broadband/ADSL) or just read the text version of the story (for those still on dial-up).

I like the new design though, clean and minimalist in a way.

Congratulations!

Though new beta version is having all the web 2.0 features, it does not look as appealing as the current version.

Almost 40-45% of the space towards right hand side goes towards advertisements. CNN has a benchmark of providing quality news and by doing this it just getting lost in the current trend of showcasing advertisements.

The section of latest news followed by watch videos is by far the best. I tried to use beta version for about 10 days now and still not able to put it above the current version.

I enjoy the freedom of going back and forth on videos on my mac as I can play them using quick time but with beta version they are embedded in flash player that has less flexibility. Also streaming could be a little problematic. If you still want to be more tech. savvy put a little link that says embed this video to facebook or say to your blog. Specially videos from Jeanne Moss section are worth sharing.

I like the new design overall…thank you for cleaning up what had become a very busy homepage.

Like some of the others, I also request that you minimize the video-only stories. Because your video viewer has a vertical mask (stripe) on the left which runs its length (on my computer, maybe others, too?), and further, since I don’t care for the commercials before each story, I’d rather read the text article and then see some photos.

Basic, solid journalism will never die. If it’s a huge breaking story, I’ll run to the television. The real one.

Let’s face it……the beta just doesn’t cut it as a news delivery site…..if you want video news then this is for you, but for those of us who the news as rapidly as we can read this won’t do……Bad move by CNN to consider this an improvement.

The “looks” of the site are attractive, but less than functional. If you are a user that doesn’t have access to broadband – like many business travelers – the video news has always been and will continue to be “fluff” that many will bypass.

Even that said, when broadband is available, most people i know (I’ve been in IT for 20 years) would prefer to read the news than to wait on video feeds.

Also, I to am having issues with your BETA site getting through firewalls, at home, at work and on the road – you are alienating readers for “bells and whistles”.

The key phrase here is “READERS” by the way, not watchers…

You should have concentrated on usability and flow and improved on your already excellent website rather than replacing the current site with “bells and whistles” – I too echo what many are saying, if you roll out your “new and improved” BETA site, I will be shifting to another news source.

I think that Science and Space would encompass Tech better than Tech is encompassing Science and Space. This seems obvious to me, how did you guys choose otherwise?

Great job on the new look — clean layout with a more modern feel. As others have noted, if you include video links on the home page, please also include links to the story. The layout for the stories with the three tabs (Read, Video, Photos) is great, now I can decide how deep I want to delve into a story. The Photos tab is nice especially the photo thumbnails as I mouse over the numbers. The fade transition on this tab feels just right (not much delay) — can you adjust the transition speed on the in-line story photo box to match as it’s still too slow.
To those who are looking for the old categories — they’re still there under the “More Stories” section — they are now grouped in threes with a couple of headlines under each heading. You can flip to the next set of categories using the left/right news changer controls underneath — you don’t have to leave the home page to skim all the categories. Two suggestions here — 1) allow the left/right control under More News to loop back around instead of stopping when you get to the beginning or end and 2) add another set of three categories to this section so we can also see the categories for Sports, Business, and Science/Space.
Overall, great incremental improvements to the site without undermining what was so beneficial about it. Keep up the great work.

I agree with those comments regarding the video. I’m not able to see video at work so an alternate text version would be nice. If a headline looks interesting and there’s only video, I too often just Google it to find a text version on another site. The 15-30 second commercials are also very annoying.

And why were the category top headlines removed below the fold on the homepage? Also, it would be nice to see true web-standards compliance. I frequently use my Windows Smartphone to surf the web and the CNN website just doesn’t cut it.

And why does the search default to “Web”? Why not CNN.com?

And finally, why does the “read related article” link appear after I vote or see the results? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have it there right from the beginning?

All that said however, I understand how difficult it can be to build such a large site when there are multiple stakeholders pulling in different directions. I deal with this daily…

Kudos for giving us the opportunity to express our opinions.

Please make a post about the technical details behind the scenes. I would really like to see how CNN works in the backend.

I only visit CNN to look at the headlines. Seldom do I click a link to read further or delv deeper into the site. I really enjoyed your new beta look especially the video player which I have written about on my own personal blog -> http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/cnns-new-beta-look/

Looks good and is easy to navigate. Please keep in mind that a lot of businesses do not allow streaming audio/video over their lines so text/html along with video is a lot better than video alone. I saw a story today I wanted to know more about but could not get to it because it was video only.

Congrats!

The new site looks great at first glance. Very clean. I agree with the various comments regarding the video only stories. I hope you are able to link video with text articles in most cases. I prefer reading the text.

I personally like the new site a great deal. The new video format is great, except that I can’t get the hourly updates to load.

As others have said, I will miss the education section. The links in the LIving section don’t represent what you have provided in the past. I have already been told that the podcast for student news will continue, but how about the lessons that went along with the podcast? I would also like to see a link in the video sections to Jeanne Moos like there has been in Pipeline.

A few things:

Please keep the size of the picture in the headline story in perspective. It does not have to occpy almost half of the page. And please don’t publish anyone’s face so big as to cover that entire picture.

Other than that, the new beta site is okay although it is still way behind the BBC news website.

I thought I was the only one who noticed the shift from text based articles to video! Thank heavens I’m not! I could not agree more with anyone who has asked that every video article be accompanied by a text version.Yes, without it it is impossible to skim for highlights. However, I see a bigger issue (and I am sure this applies to others too): I can’t (shouldn’t) watch videos at work! It’s not that my work PC doesn’t allow it, it’s that I don’t want to look like I’m watching something on YouTube, some music video website, etc. The random office passerby or my manager can’t tell that I’m listening to and watching a news article and they will surely assume that it’s something recreational leading them to believe that I’m goofing off! It just does not look good in a corporate environment – at least mine – to be at your desk watching “videos.” If these video-only articlies don’t begin to trend downward or at least have a text version I will 100% find another website to get my new information. There are plenty to choose from these days.

Ya I think it looks way too plain and should have some color/graphics to things.

It’s difficult to read the reverse-type captions and the font is too small. That tells me that it’s design driven instead of keeping it easy for the readers.

I like Paula Zahn, she’s nice to look at, in my age range so I can relate. Can you please give her other topics to report on besides racial issues. I’m apparently not the only one who feels that way because I and many others turn off CNN when sne comes on. Check the ratings, It’s not her!!
I have yet to watch Katie Couric since she replaced Dan Rather/Bob Schieffer on CBS. She’s a dud.
.

Reading over this again almost a year later is pretty comical. Fact of the matter is people HATE change to something they’ve been used to over the years.

I’m a front-end webdev myself and I applaud the long, long list of improvements to CNN.com. It’s because of it’s new clean feel, and extremely quick loading times that it’s now my main source of news on the web.

Hats off to everyone behind the scenes!

As a long-time reader, it is REALLY annoying to see so many video-only stories. I read the news instead of watching it for a reason – because video news is all too often heavily editorialized, and typically doesn’t give you the entire story. Written articles, in my opinion, tend to be more objective. Plus, you can read them at work. It would be nice if all of these video stories had an alternative text version.