CNN Headline News: This Just In

Lighten up! CNN Headline News was only on the air for one week and Howard Rosenberg abruptly gave it a harsh critique without trying to adjust and let the show evolve and amend itself for its audience (“All Headlines, No News; So This Is Progress?,” Aug. 13).

The new make-over has been radical, but I’m giving it a chance. Headline News is still far more serious, clinical and neutral than most newscasts. Besides, it is but one news bite in a day of many data bytes that will make up the total information meal we consume with each waking cycle.

We are intelligent, Howard. We don’t listen to CNN for 12 minutes and that’s it. It is just one item on the news menu. We hop into the car and tune into more news via radio and the like. We stop at coffee shops and read The Times and other papers while we eat. At work, we surf the Internet for news and, during lunchtime, we browse magazine stands for more entertainment and information.

Like good journalists, we consult multiple sources in piecing stories together. We multitask at home, at work and during our outside personal time. The new CNN Headline News has been designed with this reality in mind.

Before and after the revamp, nothing on my 100-plus-channel cable system comes close to offering the pragmatic value of Headline News. That is not to say that it does not have its limitations. But it is vital, if partial, nourishment.

CALVIN NAITO

Los Angeles

*

If I want headlines, I have about a dozen newspapers that I check on the Internet (The Times being one of them). It takes me less than 30 minutes and I don’t have to squint while trying to read the weather map. If television news, er, marketing, people really understood my generation, they would move in the opposite direction and go more in-depth on each story and finding their own angle. NPR would be a good model.

However, if your channel name is Headline News, well, I guess you’re stuck.

PATRICK BENNETT HAGEN

Provo, Utah

*

Those who only see Headline News are dangerously uninformed. (Although they’re better off than those who only watch local so-called “news” broadcasts!) But Headline News has its place.

Yes, some of the pop-up headlines--CNN promos and celebrity gossip--don’t belong. But if you’re a news junkie, the rest are not bad. To answer Rosenberg’s questions, I know exactly what “G-8” refers to, and where Mt. Pinatubo is. After all, both have been in the news quite a bit in recent weeks.

I don’t suffer from attention deficit; I’m 50, not 20; and I depend on newspapers (in print and online) for news and information, not TV. But that’s just the point: Quick headlines serve me well at times, because I get all the details from the papers.

RODNEY HOFFMAN

Los Angeles