No one likes to make fun of CNN.com as much as me (well, some do), but they might have stumbled onto something brilliant-ish with the new headline t-shirts they’re selling. As 37signals notes, the URL can be manipulated to generate new shirts on the fly:
It makes me wonder if CNN isn’t really trying anymore. Or maybe they’re trying really really hard. Or, this is the last dying gasp of publicity before they finally succumb to new media and blogs. Or, this is the story of how they adapted to it.
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Darren, we cannot manipulate the headline. When I tried to order manipulated headline, it told me “We’re Sorry. Could not add shirt to cart”.
--April 22, 2008 @ 5:10 amYeah, you can’t actually order it, you can just change the graphic.
--April 22, 2008 @ 10:33 amWhen a news organization begins to sell t-shirts, it is time to find a new source for the news. They are allowing marketing idiots to move them away from their core mission - providing global news coverage around the clock.
--April 26, 2008 @ 9:58 pmI’ve got a whole slew of other sources for news –but CNN’s over-the-top badness always keeps me coming back for more. Some read Hollywood gossip blogs for guilty pleasure, I’m hooked on CNN.
--April 27, 2008 @ 9:20 pmCNN gives so much importance to local videos that they find over the net compared to their original reporting. Its title sums up what they focus on - news, weather, entertainment and video news. If you look at NYTimes.com they realize that they have to do well with the multimedia and they do excel in this area.
I rarely watch CNN and I rarely go to cnn.com and I always get disappointed.
Collagist
--April 29, 2008 @ 2:37 pm