I visit CNN.com several times a week to keep up with both national and world current events. Recently CNN started including a t-shirt icon next to select headlines. When the users click the icon, it allows them to see the headline on a t-shirt, select a color, style and size, and order the shirt with the desired headline printed onto it. This service seems a little odd, considering many of the headlines, like "Robbers storm, trash jewelry store," seem irrelevant to wear on t-shirts. This is just another way for CNN to capitalize on news. Instead of informing people of what is going on in the world, they are doing what any business would do: trying to make money.

It is surprising that CNN is doing this as opposed to other media providers. I would expect a newspaper company to start selling t-shirts online, because newspapers are traditionally sold individually, but as technology evolves, more and more news and information reaches us digitally. Since most of the news is now available free online, newspapers are decreasing in popularity. This t-shirt idea would be a creative to push for more revenue, but it seems to be irrelevant and unnecessary. I doubt they are selling many t-shirts with the headlines that are posted. There may be a few historic headlines that people would want to save, but for the most part the everyday news is not going to be remembered. CNN is trying to capitalize on the ever so popular online t-shirt trend. The cost of producing a t-shirt is under $1 (when mass producing them), and the shirts on CNN.com are selling for $15 a piece, plus shipping and handling costs. They are making a hefty profit on each shirt they sell.

I am not personally against CNN's decision on selling headline t-shirts, despite the fact that I believe their marketing efforts are not successful. The only inconvenience for website users would be an additional icon about 3 mm wide, which could distract users and be a severe inconvenience to navigating the website. Some may claim that innocent users are being ripped off when they click on the wrong icon, and may be lead to believe they must purchase the shirt to read the article. Aside from these reasons, I don't see why anyone would object to CNN's somewhat stupid decision of selling t-shirts of printed headlines.

Posted in Posted by Umang Patel at 12:02 AM