An awesome picture of a huge dog from the "Latest Guinness world records" gallery headlines the News in Pictures section.
CBSNews.com's reliance on pictures is apparent even to the casual visitor. Pictures cover the website up and down and always somehow factor into articles. The pictures draw the eyes in and attract those who wouldn't have interest in words that essentially conveyed the same message.
CBS even has their own picture gallery section near the top of the page, as shown above. The Latest Guinness world records gallery and the 2012 Emmy parties gallery are two of the featured Monday galleries. This section mostly covers soft news, although sometimes hard news is included, like on 9/11.
Aside from the picture galleries, every section down the main page of the site has its own picture attached to the lead story. Moreover, the links to CBS News Broadcasts down the right side of the page each have pictures attached to them that summarize the main points of each video. The lead story right now is about Bill Clinton.
Every story needs a picture on CBS News. They try and utilize all of the media that they can in a changing world of journalism, and pictures are at the heart of what they do.
Audio, however, takes a backseat on CBSNews.com. The only audio link present on the front page of the website is a play button towards the bottom right of the page that connects to a broadcast of the most updated version of CBS Radio News. The broadcast is updated every hour.
While pictures drive CBSNews.com forward, they spend more time on that and video than they do with any sort of audio. They clearly feel that visuals drive reader's interest more than sound
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