MLCNNMLS.RVW   990820

"CNN Headline News by Email", headlinenewsmail@CNN.COM, 1998 - , ,
free
%A   headlinenewsmail@CNN.COM
%D   1998 -
%I   CNN
%O   free, http://CNN.com/EMAIL
%P   ~10 p. daily, including weekends
%T   "CNN Headline News by Email"

While a fairly obvious come-on to get you to visit the CNN Website,
this is a reasonably informative, though not always entirely
convenient, summary of daily news events.

There are one or two top stories, and then sections with four to six
articles each on world news, US news, business, sport, politics,
technology, and entertainment.  Each entry in the main body of the
message provides a headline, a sentence or two from the lead
paragraph, and the URL of the article itself.  Unlike other, similar,
text based mailing lists, CNN does not ensure that the URLs are on a
line by themselves to facilitate cut and paste functions between mail
readers and browsers.  However, the message does indent the headlines
with angle brackets, which means that mail readers highlighting
"quoted" text in email replies will also highlight the headlines.

A rather lengthy header lists the headlines from the first five
sections, some standard CNN Website offerings, and URLs for a few
in-depth special features.

I find that I now skip the header entirely.  In the main body of the
message, I read the headlines of the sections that interest me, and
about a tenth of the introductory paragraphs.  About once a month, an
article is of sufficient interest to warrant a visit to the Website
for the full article.

Very often stories will be duplicated in more than one section.  I
also find that the section of greatest interest to me, technology,
tends to run duplicated stories for two or three days, which is rather
annoying.  (I would far rather see one or two new technology stories
each day than have to re-read old material.)  This does not appear to
be the practice in the other sections.

Management of subscriptions is apparently done only through the
Website at http://CNN.com/EMAIL.

This mailing list is not up to the concise quality of "The Daily
Brief" (cf. BKDLYBRF.RVW), but does provide a quick way to keep up on
most of the news of the day.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   MLCNNMLS.RVW   990820