Missing Children on CNN…

{ February 23, 2007 @ 1:33 pm } · { Newstrack: CNN.com }

CNN.com has a new purpose today – to help locate missing children. Although the main picture (and story) on the site is guised as a breaking story, children are kidnapped all the time and no one cares – so why is this one different?

I believe it has little to do with the circumstances of the kidnapping -I think CNN is doing it to force every one of their millions of viewers to stare 13-year-old Clay Moore’s face when logging on to the site today, in the hopes that someone has seen him since he was taken this morning.

This is a really creative and actually effective way of upholding the requirement for communications companies to have a certain amount of public service.

CNN has an excellent tool for this built right into it’s existance - the fact that 10 million people view their site every day. Out of these 10 million people, every one will see the large picture of Clay Moore and wonder “have I seen this kid?”

And out of these 10 million, there’s a pretty good chance at least one of them will answer “yes.”