I enjoy reading the news, and there are a number of websites I read throughout the day, with CNN.com being one of the websites I visit most frequently. I check back on their website often, although I usually stick to the main headlines, as those are generally the most interesting to me.
Just about everyone in the domain industry knows that CNN paid $750,000 to acquire iReport.com from Rick “Domain King” Schwartz in early 2008. On iReport.com, citizen “journalists” can submit “news” stories they feel would be of interest to others. It’s a neat idea to give exposure to people whose articles may be interesting to others.
Sometime in the last year I think, CNN began adding iReports to its CNN.com home page, without identifying the links as iReports until you got to the actual news story. As far as I am aware, there is no real way to filter actual CNN news stories from these iReport articles. It’s frustrating to me when I click a link and end up on an iReport, as I have come to trust the CNN brand rather than random people who submit stories.
I think it was a good strategic move to buy iReport.com and build a brand on it. I think it’s a really bad move to integrate iReport “journalism” with the actual news, as it is annoying for readers like me who don’t want to read this type of “news.”