The 'Go To Our Website' News Baloney

Television news, both local and national, as well as newspapers, seem unwilling to report the news in their respective formats anymore, or maybe it's about something else, like money. At times just the basics are given about a story, followed by, "For more information on this, go to our website." Going to some of the news websites can be frustrating, as you almost need to have a degree in computer technology to find a particular story, and even doing a search on their sites can leave you cussing and angry, as finding a particular story can be even more irritating than finding a piece of real personal mail amid the junk mail in your home or business mailbox. With all the things on their websites, including ads, you'd better have super fast internet speed, or you'll be cussing more about the time it takes just to get into their website, and then again if you click on any of the stories. It sure looks to me like this is just another way of getting money, as these news entities all derive revenue from ads placed on their websites. That's fine, but it just seems such a shoddy way to report the news, and the news now seems like a giant advertisement for their websites. A few years ago, an elderly lady said to me about the newspaper, "I pay to have the newspaper delivered to my home, and I start reading a story and they tell me to go to their website."

WORD HISTORY:
Site-This word, meaning essentially "location, position," and closely related to "situate" and "situation," has an unclear origin, but Latin had the verb "sinere," which meant "to set down, to place or put." This produced the Latin noun "situs" (from the participle of "sinere"), which meant "location, place." This gave French, a Latin based language, "site," which was carried to England by the Normans. The word didn't spread into general English usage until the latter part of the 1500s. The verb, meaning "to position/locate something to a place," came from the noun.