New CNN is ugly, confusing, and irritating

What could CNN be thinking?

It's in last place among cable news networks. Yet CNN changes the look of its web site to make it painful to look at and almost impossible to find any real news on.

I used to spend quite a bit of time on CNN.com. Now I take a glance, get a headache, and quickly click over to the New York Times and Google News.

Big red banner. Big ads. Big headlines about nothing important (current featured story, "Groggy: excess sleep could be reason"). Small type size. Small focus on hard news.

This all adds up to a lousy web site. Some find good, bad, and the ugly in the redesign. I haven't noticed anything good so far, agreeing with a Yahoo questioner: "Why does the new CNN website sucks so bad?"

I'm bothered, because Fox News already is kicking CNN's butt. That hurts my progressive sensibilities. I'd like to see CNN become more of an effective truth-counterweight to Fox's falsities.

But the new CNN"s emphasis on video is a step in the wrong direction.

I like to read my news online, not watch it. I don't want to spend five minutes watching a CNN video, complete with ads, when I could scan a written story in a few seconds and get the info that I'm looking for.

This comes on the heels of CNN"s recent release of a hugely annoying iPhone app that reeked with ads and hard to read white on black typography.

(Note to web site designers: when I come across a site or blog that has light colored type on a dark background, I race away -- the eyestrain isn't worth it, no matter how good the content).

What must have happened is that Fox News infiltrated an undercover agent into the CNN graphic design staff, who now is doing his or her best to make CNN difficult for people to enjoy.

The plot is succeeding, for sure.

Comments

[Pam]

I agree 100%.

[Rain]

I have also not liked CNN for news but before the new change. I don't like getting videos instead of written stories and more than once clicked on one of their headlines to have to quickly cut it off. Having a dish limits my bandwidth and videos eat it up which eventually puts me on slow speed-- never fun. My favorite general news site is Google for being simple, lots of headlines then I go to newspaper sites which can also be good. MSNBC isn't at the top either. For opinion, I like Huffington which mixes some news with a lot of opinion pieces often by writers I would not find elsewhere.

[Jeremy Sandberg]

I agree... just a few seconds on the site and aesthetically it kills me, not to mention the poor content!

[Allison]

At one time CNN's site started to look a bit dated, and they revamped to the version they were using just before this ugly change. I can't imagine why they thought they needed another change- especially this aesthetically unappealing one. Maybe they commissioned a study and were told that people would spend more time on the site if they revamped in this manner. Well, I don't want to spend more time on a site if it's due to hunting down stories. The New York Times website has always been a favorite of mine and is now my preference for news.