Why read when you can watch?
I hate it when CNN runs video on CNN.com and doesn’t include a small story with the video.
Take this image, for example. Something rare happened and you want to know what that was. You click on the link (neglecting to notice that silly video camera icon next to it) and a Pipeline window opens up. You’re on a slow connection at work and you can’t see the video and you’re only left with the tiny snippet of text on the right that describes it.
Would it make more sense to have that link to an article which also includes video? I’d even let them put the video camera icon to the right of the link to indicate that the article also includes a video.
I imagine this is all because CNN gets big money for ads displayed in or around video feeds and these links bring in traffic. I generally ignore the links as they’re puff pieces anyway, but still.