If you are at all like me (and God save you if you're not), you have recently been to CNN.com. You, like me, probably spend a solid twenty hours a week on the website, posting comments on the articles pointing out gaps in journalistic prowess to the site's editors. Really, the website is to online news what Meg White is to online nudity.
Anyway, you have probably noticed that recently CNN.com has started summarizing its articles, like so:
This "story highlights" portion is clearly designed to allow readers of the website to move on to more important articles. They do not have to feel guilty (like they do for just reading the headlines), but they also don't have to clean the drool off their keyboards when they fall asleep after reading one paragraph of this Melville-esque prose.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that this commentator writes for The Grimary Gource. I think, though, that you will not disagree when I state that The Gource gives you news in a way you can read.
Anyway, this new practice of CNN's is abominable. No, I know what you're thinking; I am not some Highlander-watching stopgap who thinks that news worth reading must be understood with complete context, and thus this sort of summarizing only serves to obscure truth or decrease American knowledge of important issues or whatever stupid business these people whine about when they're not mixing red and white wine and painting their faces with the results.
The Gource thinks that this practice is unnerving because it is certain to bring more readers to CNN.com, just as every student at Gufts flocks to the teacher who doesn't require homework to be done in a timely manner or a legible font. This sort of dissemination of false information to the masses can only mean bad news for those of us in the upper echelon of masculinity and brains. Ultimately, of course, it is a futile gesture, as those who refuse to read CNN.com will always be more powerful than those who read its story highlights, but it certainly doesn't make our jobs any easier.
Anyway, you have probably noticed that recently CNN.com has started summarizing its articles, like so:
This "story highlights" portion is clearly designed to allow readers of the website to move on to more important articles. They do not have to feel guilty (like they do for just reading the headlines), but they also don't have to clean the drool off their keyboards when they fall asleep after reading one paragraph of this Melville-esque prose.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that this commentator writes for The Grimary Gource. I think, though, that you will not disagree when I state that The Gource gives you news in a way you can read.
Anyway, this new practice of CNN's is abominable. No, I know what you're thinking; I am not some Highlander-watching stopgap who thinks that news worth reading must be understood with complete context, and thus this sort of summarizing only serves to obscure truth or decrease American knowledge of important issues or whatever stupid business these people whine about when they're not mixing red and white wine and painting their faces with the results.
The Gource thinks that this practice is unnerving because it is certain to bring more readers to CNN.com, just as every student at Gufts flocks to the teacher who doesn't require homework to be done in a timely manner or a legible font. This sort of dissemination of false information to the masses can only mean bad news for those of us in the upper echelon of masculinity and brains. Ultimately, of course, it is a futile gesture, as those who refuse to read CNN.com will always be more powerful than those who read its story highlights, but it certainly doesn't make our jobs any easier.
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