A reader writes:
Ignore the critics. Haters will be haters. I love the new feature.
Another writes:
Personally I am happy to be able to put a face to the name of the one blog I read daily. This is right in line with growing up with David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite sharing the dinner hour with my entire family at the table, Mom serving everyone and the family watching the news together. That was part of our daily ritual. I bring my lunch to work every day and clear some space on my desk to enjoy my meal, and have been sharing this time with The Dish for about four years now. Seeing your face, hearing your voice, getting a feel for your personality, all adds to the experience. I don't expect to see you behind a network news desk, but a shot where you actually blog from would be most interesting. And it would great fun if Patrick, Chris, Zoe, Maisie, and Zack all made guest appearances.
Another:
I like the new video feature! For us in the UK, it's good to see and hear more of you, as I'd guess you appear more on American TV than British.
Another:
Re: Transcripts "defeating the purpose." Ah, but transcripts are essential for search engines; you want those Google hits, no? And I didn't check – are the videos captioned? My hearing is still good, thankfully, but I'm sure there are others who would depend on a reliable transcription.
Traffic is nice, but the Dish has never been a traffic chaser. Another reader:
The videos should have a text caption that lets readers know what the topic is at a glance. I'm loading the videos now because they're new, but I've only been interested in 1/3 of them so far. If that interest rate continues, and I don't have a caption to indicate whether the question is interesting to me, I'm likely to just skip over all the videos to save time.
We would prefer people clicking on the video to see the question, which appears within the first 5 seconds. But we will take it under consideration. Another:
Perfect timing for this new video feature. My question is simple and maybe not quite what you had in mind for this feature, but I just read your post about accents, where you mention that an Englishman saying "Aristotle" sounds like "one guttural syllable." For the life of me, I can't dream up what that must sound like. Any chance you might say it for us on video?
An episode on accents could be fun, stay tuned. By the way, regarding the problem with viewing the videos on the iPhone, our tech team just resolved it. A big thanks to them and everyone at the Beast who helped put this new feature together, especially David Wharton and Susie Banikarim. And thanks for all the great feedback. The feature, along with everything at the Dish, is a work in progress.
The Dish 