News Videos

[imoldernu]

My opinion only:
The growing trend towards replacing "printed" news article with videos is discouraging to me. When I go to an article found on Google or other websites, instead of the written word, the first thing that comes up, is some verson of a video clip... often preceeded by a commercial. Not always, but often enough, the video is the only offering to explain the headline that I was interested in. Watching the video means a time commitment. When a written article pops up, I can speed read to see if it's what interests me, or just skip the article entirely. With the video, it's a waste of time.

Is this what the majority wants? Is spoon feeding from a video clip the new normal? Who is this change appealing to? The young? Those who have become addicted to TV as a normal news source? Most people?
Whatever, it's apparently the way of the future of news on the internet.
I am not happy about this.

Your thoughts?

 

[Katsmeow]

I have mixed feelings about. First, it does annoy me because often I feel I could read an article much more quickly than watch the video. So I hate having to watch the video. What I like is where they have an article summarizing the video or have an actual transcript of the video. There are times that I am interested in watching the video and so it is nice to have the option when I want to watch it.

 

[CoolChange]

My opinion only:
....
Your thoughts?

Not just your opinion.

My thoughts are close to exactly the same.

In fact, I am looking for a replacement for Google News (my current home page) that will allow me to set up custom filters to exclude sites that tend to be video heavy. (I also hate the sights that force you to page through them vs. at least giving me the option of displaying the entire article on a single page.)

 

[easysurfer]

Unfortunately, it's called advertising.

I dislike newspaper sights that only give the first paragraph or so of the story, then wants you to join in order to read the rest.

 

[ERD50]

Not just your opinion.

My thoughts are close to exactly the same.

Also agree. Listen to a 5 minute video, only to find that no, they didn't cover the part of the subject I was looking for. But a quick 'find' on the term in text would have told me almost instantly.

As Katsmeow said, if they supply text and video, that is good. Choice is good.

I guess we all should be writing to the sites that do video only on a topic. Maybe they'll listen? But it probably is about the ability to shove an ad at the start. Can't blame them, they need income to support the business. But there must be a better way. Click on the video ad to get the text? A 30 sec ad would be better than a 5 minute non-relevant video.

-ERD50

 

[Walt34]

I also skip a lot of sites that have only video. Takes too much time.

 

[KiraC]

I loaded a plug in for my Firefox browser to stop the videos before they can start and I updated the settings so adobe flash needs my permission to run. So far it's working to stop the video bandwidth hogs and if there is a printed story, I can read it. If there is only video, I don't bother watching it.