News you can wear
May 1, 2008 at 3:58 pm by Wayne GarciaGabe up at the front desk here at alt-central pointed this out to me this morning:
CNN.com is now selling T-shirts with its most tabloid-esque headlines on them.
Just when you think that the news biz has hit rock bottom. Of course, there will be no corporate pressure on headline-writing copy editors to come up with snappier, more tabloid headlines so that they can be monetized into T-shirts. None whatsoever.
But CNN is offering T’s for only the goofy, funny or sensational headlines, with a little T-shirt icon next to those heads (”911 dispatcher falls asleep during call,” “Mom-to-be charged with another DUI”) whereas the great meaty headlines I would want on my T-shirts aren’t featured (”Barbara Walters: I had affair with U.S. senator,” “Immigrant worker: No $$$ left for Mexico,” and the ever-popular, “Official: Two bombs at Iraqi wedding kill 35.”)
Here’s one example of the fun, witty T’s you can get:
I’m personally waiting for the “Bush: ‘Mistakes were made’” shirt.
Already, this affront to real journalism has met with criticism and spoofing, like this from the Ryan Block blog:
