"News," eh?

I went to ABC.com, expecting to be dazzled by the wide variety of hard-hitting, serious news reports which I assumed would be sprinkled about the site. Instead, I was hit with headlines like "HOT NEWS: BRITNEY IN A BIKINI!" I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to find anything more relatively important, and still very few of those were played up as much as the Britney issue. Since so much space was devoted to her and the haircut, I decided to watch a video clip about it. The clip actually had an anchor seriously explaining the important issue, and another video even offered expert insight into the lives of several young popstars. Really I was disturbed by how much media attention was going to this frankly uninteresting and unimportant segment of pop culture. But even so, I was bored out of my mind with the lack of actual INFORMATION provided. If you're going to talk about some celebrity escapade, at least go into some interesting detail that will hold attention. They repeated the same two shots of Britney with her head shaved, and mentioned her new tattoos at least twice--but never specified what they were or why they were relevant. Because of this, I really don't think that the story--at least at that stage in its development--was broadcast-ready. Without informative or varied shots, the actual bits of information that were provided could just as easily have been presented through a well-written story with one or two still photos sufficing for visuals. Text-only may be slightly less effective just because it is sort of shocking to actually see the celebrity without hair. Other than that, I would argue that this "story" was a waste of 30 seconds of my life.