Click Here for Britney! - journalism standards of America Online

Washington Monthly, July, 2001 by Brendan I. Koerner

Not surprisingly, the welcome screen is now packed with in-house ads for AOL's floundering WB television network ("Dawson's Creek: They graduate tonight at 8 p.m.") or tacky come-ons for Martha Stewart-style baubles ("Make this summer bright! Glorious combinations of color and candlelight by Illumination").

"They used to divide the welcome screen into just three little blurbs," says David Cassel, editor of the AOL Watch newsletter and one of the company's most tenacious critics. "Now I see over a dozen links, plus a menu for over a dozen AOL areas. It's like a casino. They want to make it as hard as possible for you to wander off someplace else."

Since users cannot close the welcome screen as they surf, it is far more valuable to advertisers than the easily ignorable banners or pop-ups that most Web sites offer. And, of course, there is the sheer number of eyeballs at stake, over a quarter of them belong to "newbies" with less than one year's experience online, who are most apt to use e-commerce. "I sort of miss the bird-dropping content," sighs Cassel. "At least that was a bit edgy. Now it's mostly slick corporate propaganda for AOL Time Warner properties."

Mr. Stinky's Back!

The shameless hawking would not be so troubling were AOL more honest about its crassly commercial aims. This is, after all, the corporation that instructed Nora Ephron to change the title of her film from You Have Mail to You've Got Mail, the better to publicize its copyrighted catch phrase. But the postmerger AOL crows about its dedication to journalism, as if the welcome screen and its affiliated channels were some sort of digital rival to The Washington Post. To its credit, the service does feature all the top Reuters and Associated Press clippings, often with links to full-text speeches or a few paragraphs of instant analysis. When Vermont senator James Jeffords abandoned the Republicans, for example, the Top News box on the welcome screen did feature a one-click link to the AP story, as well as off-links to a menu of companion pieces on the GOP's miscues or the mood in Vermont. But these wire-service packages are often seamlessly combined with softer items that smack of sponsorship dollars. Right below a recent Reuters headline reading "U.S. Takes Action Against IRA," for example, AOL's programmers saw nothing wrong with placing a link to a story on Lyme Disease--a link which directed users to an insipid advertorial on MayoClinic.com. Nor did they have any qualms about turning a seemingly objective business feature, "Lower mortgage rates spur refinancing boom," into an off-link that whisked surfers away to Realtor.com. And the spotlight story under the "Technology" banner, a glowing report on Microsoft's Xbox gaming console, failed to mention AOL's considerable financial interest in the system; Warner Brothers has licensed several of its movies to Xbox developers.

There is also a surfeit of Weekly World News-like oddities among the news, including an array of Yeti-of-the-Month yarns in the "Watercooler" section. On one typical day, the Watercooler's top stories were "Monkey Man panic grows in New Delhi" and a tale of a giant flower known for its offensive odor. The latter item was the only news-oriented link to earn a hallowed welcome-screen mention, with a teaser that read: "Cover your nose! Mr. Stinky's back!"