Breaking News
Perhaps symptomatic of living in the post 911 world, when I see the ‘breaking news’ graphic on BBC News Online I experience a momentary shudder of fear that it might be another terrorist attack. While I’m relieved when I discover that it isn’t, I do expect that striking red graphic to be assigned to news that is worthy of such urgency and not to news that some Harry Potter books have been stolen (again). Might I suggest that the BBC vary the look of their ‘breaking news’ graphics so that less important news is broken slightly more calmly? Maybe something like this…
7:36 am on 17 June 2003 :::
The Narrator Says:Amen.
8:32 am on 17 June 2003 :::
mal Says:Dolphins?!?! LOL
BTW, have you got a grab of the BBC graphic? I don’t see it on the news homepage.
9:13 am on 17 June 2003 :::
Matt Says:They could have context specific ‘breaking news’ graphics as well. Next time a lorry accidentally spills tons of peas onto the A1, they could have this:
Haven’t got a grab mal, but when I do I’ll post it here.
11:29 am on 17 June 2003 :::
natis Says:i experience the same thing every time i see the breaking story tagline on boston.com. nearly two years later and i still can’t shake the feeling of being so utterly unable to help and to be so far from home.
11:31 am on 17 June 2003 :::
Reid Says:Matt, I completely agree with “context specific” breaking news, although I think we’ll be seeing alot of this image…
11:54 am on 17 June 2003 :::
mal Says:I’m beginning to think you should host a competition for designing new Breaking News graphics. Now if only I had Gill Sans…
1:04 pm on 17 June 2003 :::
Matt Says:Well if anyone else wants to create one, the image size is 207px by 133px and the font is Gill Sans at 23px (or thereabouts). Just save it to your server as a jpg or a gif and then post a comment here that looks something like:
<img src=”absolute link to image” alt=”image description” />
1:53 pm on 17 June 2003 :::
Stu Says:Generic ‘news flash’ motion graphics (and sound effect) work well enough on TV news, but maybe it’s different on the web. Is this problem unique to the BBC site?
10:40 am on 19 June 2003 :::
mal Says:Maybe it’s just the shouty, all-caps text? Or maybe it is the words – after all, I’d never freak if the graphic just said “Latest News”. Or maybe I would if it were “LATEST NEWS”. Yep, I reckon it’s the caps.