“The medium is the message.” This famous sentence written by Marshal McLuhan (1964) more than three decades ago tells us that each medium has fundamental and unique characteristics. According to him, the information distributed by the media is less important than the media itself. McLuhan argued that “the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology” (p.7). Although his argument, including the controversial distinction between hot and cold media, met with widespread criticism, some of McLuhan’s basic ideas seem pertinent even today as a new media environment comes into sight – the Internet. More moderately speaking, the medium may determine the way the message is presented.
Of concern here is a specific kind of Web-based message, that is, news distributed on the World Wide Web (WWW). There are now several hundred U.S. newspapers and broadcasts offering Internet news services called "online journalism." While much of what passes for online journalism today generally is the content that has been “repurposed” from an affiliated news organization’s “legacy,” the online future goes beyond shoveling legacy news stories into cyberspace (Massey & Levy, 1999). The potential of online journalism can be better understood, I think, by addressing and answering a question about the uniqueness of modality in repurposing news stories on the Web. The question might be stated this: What are the characteristics of Web-based news presentation, especially compared to those in the traditional media, i.e. the print media and the broadcast media?
This question involves three sub-questions, as follows: (1) What are the characteristics of print-based news and television news? (2) What are the unique characteristics of the WWW and online journalism? And (3) how is the news presentation on the Web modified as news stories are repurposed? I will cover the first two questions by offering a literature review and building a theoretical framework, and give an answer to the last question through a very simple investigation into several front pages run by major news Web sites. This study was intended as a preliminary one subject to further development.
Printed news runs news holes, while televised news runs airtime. This common sense distinction suggests the most basic difference in news presentation between newspapers and television news. The print medium employs the space-based presentation mode, while the broadcast medium utilizes the time-based presentation mode. As a consequence of this fundamental, roughly three differences between the print-based and televised news presentation can be named, seen below.
Differences in processing of news by audiences. While newspapers deliver readers limited types of information (written text and still pictures), television news is more visually oriented and includes more types of information (sight, sound, and motion). Previous research suggests that visual information is more easily processed than verbal information (e.g. Son, Reese, and Davie, 1987). Nonetheless, newspapers have an important advantage in that individuals can process information contained in them when it is most convenient for the reader and at a pace that is best suited to the reader (Wanta, 1997). In contrast, the rapid pace of television makes it difficult for viewers to do extensive processing of incoming information (Singer, 1980). From the audience's standpoint, the printed information is generally more manageable and controllable in its use than is the televised counterpart.
Singer (1980) argues that superficial processing of televised information leads to stronger recognition but poorer recall, whereas reading, which is able to take full advantage of cognitive potentials with newspapers, is a superior medium for recall. Accordingly, although newspaper reading requires more mental effort than television viewing, once it happens, individuals can learn more from a printed message than from a televised message.
Differences in news significance cues. Newspapers give readers a variety of news significance cues, while television news give viewers simplified news significance cues. McClure and Patterson (1976) noted that newspapers have at their disposal traditional means of indicating emphasis and significance. These significance cues include whether a news story is long or short, whether it has an accompanying picture or not, whether it has a large headline or a small headline, whether it is on the front page or on a back page, and whether it is run above the fold or below the fold. Thus, the print medium gives readers a strong, lasting, and visual indication of significance.
When it comes to television news, depending on time order, as Wanta (1997) noted, there is difficulty in differentiating significance cues between news stories beyond the lead story. The lead story on a news broadcast gives viewers a strong indication that the issue covered is important. Yet, the rapid pace of a telecast can confuse viewers beyond the lead story. For example, is the second story, which is 20 seconds long, more important than the third story, which is 2 minutes long? From a news director’s standpoint, the answer is yes, but the evidence from a news consumer’s standpoint is less clear. Despite these shortcomings, television can deliver a powerful significance cue in some instances. If television news breaks into regular entertainment programming to report a greater-than-bulletin-length story, the salience of that issue or event to viewers is dramatic (McClure & Patterson, 1976).
Differences in forte news type. It is widely known that television news has an advantage in delivering breaking/ developing news stories, while newspapers deserve merit in giving their contexualtized, in-depth reports of an event/ issue. The format of the television news program results in limited coverage of a large number of stories, rather than providing in-depth reports, as newspapers do (McClure and Patterson, 1976). On the other hand, the newspaper organization has more difficulty in coping with unexpected, developing events than the broadcast counterpart has. Tuchman (1978) cites an example of two news media’s coverage of Martin Luther King’s fatal injury and subsequent death. A newspaper organization in New England had to make a change in front page layout three times before print, whereas a network station easily continued to release the latest news stories as the event developed. Taken as a whole, broadcast organizations can handle more easily the demand for “fresh stuff,” while newspaper organizations boast their “richness” through going deep into events/issues.
Additionally, television news making tends to depend on exciting and directly relevant visual presentations. An event or issue that satisfies the visual dimension is likely to get heavier television coverage than other ones. This visual dimension of television can override other dimensions. For instance, during the network coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign, television news viewers could describe a candidate’s appearance in great detail; however, they could remember nothing that he said (McClure & Patterson, 1976).
Strictly speaking, the World Wide Web (WWW) is only one feature of the Internet, but most people now use its acronym as a synonym for the Internet. Although the history of the Internet goes back more than three decades, this technology remained relatively unknown to “laymen” until the release of the WWW in 1991. With the introduction of the WWW and the appearance of graphical browsers in 1993, however, the cryptic, text-driven limitations of Internet were overcome and the WWW is now experiencing an exponential growth in online population every year (Chang, 1999; Engel, 2000).
What are the characteristics of the WWW? Commonly named is a set of specific characteristics such as intertextuality, nonlinearity, reader as writer, global reach, disappearing text, and so forth (Martir & Cohen, 1999). These characteristics are predicated from the technical nature of hyperlinks, hypertexts and hypermedia. In the context of online journalism, the Internet is supposed to offer the technical capability for “interactivity,” which is often considered the most distinctive contribution of online journalism (Newhagen & Levy, 1998).
Then, what is interactivity? This broad concept remains somewhat elusive in a definitional morass, even though there are a number of studies on interactivity and online journalism (Massey & Levy, 1999). The general tendency is to classify a wide range of Web-site features under the rubric of interactivity. Remarkably, Massey and Levy make a broad distinction between “content interactivity” and “interpersonal interactivity.” The former refers to “the degree to which journalists technically empower consumers over content,” while the latter means “the extent to which news audiences can have computer-mediated conversations through journalists’ technological largess” (1999, p.140).
Also notable are contradicting views of interactivity and online journalism. The emphasis on interactivity tends to encourage a notion that online journalism potentially empowers its audience. Contrary to this notion, several media critics argued that embedding hypertext links into a Web-published story gives readers a false sense of interactive control over content (e.g., Pogash, 1996). For example, Katz (1994) blasted the typical user interface of electronic newspapers by saying:
Reading a newspaper online is difficult, cumbersome, and time consuming. There is none of the feel of scanning a story, turning pages for more, skipping easily back to the beginning. The impact of seeing a picture, headline, caption, and some text in one sweep is completely lost. With news glimpsed only in fragments and short scrolls, the sense of what the paper thinks is important disappears (cited in Mueller & Kamerer, 1995, p.4)
Although he seems now rather outdated and colored with romanticism as on-line news continues to evolve, his argument was partly supported by Mueller & Kamerer (1995). They gave a report of readers’ satisfaction scores for electronic newspapers, revealing both the advantages and disadvantages of reading digital pages. According to them, subjects reported their ease in searching current and specific information, whereas they noted the loss of the feeling of all the news material leisurely at their command. One implication of this controversy touches upon a task-oriented project for online news presentation: the reading experience of online materials should be not a simple, crude mix of two characteristics of the print and the broadcast media, likened to watching a newspaper front page on a TV-like screen.
Along with the uniqueness of interactivity as new communication mode, also important in the discussion of online journalism are the potentials of “hypermedia” as online tools. Hypermedia is the online tools that allow journalists to create electronic links between their stories and other online content, such as other stories, audios, still or full-motion videos (Pavlik, 2000). Understanding of the nature of hypermedia is especially relevant to the topic of Web-based news presentation, because hypermedia directly concerns some unique characteristics of the “new medium” which can be compared with traditional print and broadcast media. Hypermedia also suggests a range of technical capability in the first place available to journalists or online staffs who are in charge of news presentation on the Web. For example, Fredin & David (1998) stated that, while a hypermedia news story cannot force a person to act with volition, intentional action can be encouraged and made worthwhile through organizing structures of choices in the presentation of the hypermedia news story.
Hardware and software developers are continually increasing technical capabilities, making possible dreams turned into realities. Yet, while many technical limitations are rapidly disappearing, some fundamental characteristics of the WWW as a medium will remain relatively stable. By comparing a Web-based news presentation with print-based and broadcast counterparts, and considering its relevant technical uniqueness as before, I formulated three fundamental modalities in the presentation of news stories on the Web.
Click-based news presentation. By clicking a link or an option at his/ her will, a human user can have access to a full news story, download a multimedia file including visual or audio information, and move to other digital pages within the same Web site, or even to another Web site. Relying on the WWW’s connectivity, the click-basedness refers to some range of user choices with predetermined results. Thanks to this WWW- specific technical feature, a news web site does not have to include all news material on the first page available to users. Instead of displaying full news stories, clickable links serve as informative headlines waiting for users who want to read more. Currently, much of the interactivity on the Web means an extended version of this characteristic - the click-based information acquisition - though “true” interactivity, according to some critics, should allow readers to become participants in the creation of news (Noth, 1996).
Cyberspace-based news presentation. News stories are presented on a Web page and their presentation is mainly dependent on the form of written text, although other types of information (especially audio/visual information) is possibly offered. The similarity of web-based news to printed news is also implied in the technical capability that newspaper pages can be rendered into PDF files on the Web, which are seen as a direct copy of newspapers on screen. This implies that much of this editing technique for the printed media can be applied to the new online medium. Cyberspace, however, has one critical difference because the “news hole” in cyberspace is technically limitless. In practice, financial and staff resources create limits.
Update-based news presentation. Frequent updates of Web pages are technically possible, although the degree of their realization varies, depending mainly on whether or not an online news service has enough personnel to take care of the updates. The capability of updates makes the news Web page subject to change over time, creating both impressions of continuity and transience. Similar to a network broadcast delivering a breaking/developing news story, news Web sites can do the same job by frequent updates of their front Web page. As a result, an online news service might carry a responsibility to be always timely when consumers expect the news to be up-to-the-minute (Gubman and Greer, 1997).
These three fundamental modalities identified above can work as a blueprint from which more detailed features of the news presentation on the Web can be derived. Among those specific features, of special concern are some visual aspects of virtual pages as a new “rhetoric of the page.” Engel (2000) pointed out that, as computer technologies have emerged as dominant communication media, a new visual rhetoric of digital pages has emerged as well. The visual rhetoric stands for ideal strategies to maximize the impressions of virtual pages equipped with connectivity and continuity on the Web. The next step of this study, therefore, lies in identifying and confirming the elements of “the visual rhetoric,” no matter how nascent or full-fledged, which can be observable on actual digital pages on news Web sites.
Rather than creating rigid forms of operationalizable variables, I did a brief and simple content analysis for the purpose mentioned above. Ten major U.S. news Web sites were selected: for online newspapers, chicagotribune.com (The Chicago Tribune), latimes.com (The Los Angeles Times), merccenter.com (San Jose Mercury News), nytimes.com (The New York Times), usatoday.com (USA today) and washingtonpost.com (The Washington Post) were selected. For broadcast-based sites, I searched abc.go.com (ABC), cbsnews.cbs.com (CBS), cnn.com (CNN), and msnbc.com/news (MSMBC).
All of these sites were assumed to represent more or less state-of-the-art news presentations. While colossal news sites exist now in the online world, most of the online newspapers are polarized into two categories – large ones supported by large staffs and small ones where one or two staff members have to do all the work (Ban and Tankard, 1998). Since small-sized online newspapers or local station-based news sites are unlikely to keep up with the Web’s potential (Gubman and Greer, 1997), I focused only on large-sized online news services. The San Jose Mercury News, though not a general-type newspaper, was selected because it is generally credited as one of the pioneers in the online news service business (Brown, 1999). All of the online material was collected on November 29, 2000.
For convenience, the features of the front pages and sub-pages including top news stories were investigated. As with Massey and Levy's (1999) study, a distinction between a “home page” and a “front page” can be made. A home page is the page which a business or an organization uses as an initial screen. The home page will contain links to many Web sites, each of which has its own “front page.” Often there was a case in which the home page was not thought to be the same as the front page; e.g., abcnews.go.com was connected to abc.com, and cbsnews.cbs.com was connected to cbs.com.
My analysis included the sub-pages containing top stories. The top story on a news Web site was determined primarily by the size of headline text on a front page. The second criterion was the placement of the headline text. In most news sites, their top story was the latest news about the still-ongoing dispute over the U.S. presidential election results. This issue seemed particularly big one, which spawns unusual cumulative and highly wired news service-based coverage. For this reason, I additionally gathered top local news pages in online newspapers. For usatoday.com, the top story in the national news section was gathered. Since merccenter.com covered a local news story as the top on its front page, an additional sub-page was not searched.
Prior to conducting an exploratory content analysis of the pages listed above, I determined to identify a set of topics for analysis. They were derived from my considerations as follows;
Consideration of click-based news presentation. A hyperlink can be thought to be an individual cueing of choice-derived connectivity. It also concerns the structure of information management, by which a user deals with and has access to a number of resources. Remarkably, Engel (2000) defined “indexing” as one of the most obvious features of visual information structure on a digital page. Indexing refers to some form of classification list complemented by the appropriate pagination with which to locate the desired information quickly and easily (The Chicago Manual of Style, 1993). Characteristic of the indexing on a Web page is, however - unlike the common notions of chronological pagination, - is the orderly location of records as being “indexed” (Wilson, 1994). Given this consideration, I investigated what roles hyperlink texts play on the front page and tried to categorize them in terms of indexing functions.
Another critical implication of click-basedness concerns the connectivity of hypermedia - a variety of connections to other content such as related stories and audio/videos. Some researchers argue that the technical capability of hypermedia provides an opportunity to report news events and processes in much greater context than in traditional media. By allowing users unprecedented access to information, they can enjoy its “richness” “only a few mouse clicks away.” (Fredin & David, 1998). Their laudatory remarks on Web-based news services seem to touch upon an idealized notion of journalism, considering the criticism that, in practice, both of print and broadcast journalism tend to offer mere episodic news rather than “thematic” news (Iyengar, 1991). Taking up a more moderate idea of the aforementioned “visual rhetoric,” I looked for some visual indicators of the “freshness” and “richness” of news material on digital pages.
Consideration of cyberspace-based news presentation. Of primary concern here was how similar or different the appearance of a front page on the Web is with regard to the design of its newspaper counterpart. In particular, the unique features of a digital page in terms of significance cues were examined. As already mentioned, the front pages of offline newspapers have lots of news significance cues such as the length of a news story, the presence of an accompanying picture, the size of a headline, and the location of a news article. This means a hierarchy of news significance cues on printed news output. Then, when it comes to digital pages, what happens to the visualized news significance hierarchy? For convenience, I investigated whether or not the top story was recognizable and how complex the hierarchical system of news significance cues was.
Also remarkable is that in broadcast news journalism the significance cue of the first aired story is overwhelming, compared to other stories aired subsequently. Do broadcast-associated news sites share a similar logic in their news presentation? To answer this question, I checked the degree to which a top news story was visually emphasized.
Consideration of update-based news presentation. One essential characteristic of digital pages is the technical capability for updates, creating the impressions of endless continuity. This impression has some parallels to the merit of broadcast news presentation. A TV network station can relatively easily cope with the frequent releases of latest news stories, as a breaking event develops over time. Similarly, a news Web site can provide, at least in principle, frequent updates of its digital pages.
This potential may encourage some visual forms of “freshness” of updated news stories. Offline newspapers and still many broadcast media have a work routine on a daily basis. However, if the online output substantially departs from this routine, the digital publication might be stamped with a 24-hour-based indicator rather than a daily-based one. Thus, my concern here was whether or not the latest update time was noted and whether or not an individual notice of upload time for each of the news stories was offered.
Consideration of new features influenced by other Internet businesses. The idea was finally added that Internet news sites might share some design features and indications with other Internet businesses, many of which serve as a search engine, infomediary, content portal, auction service, and so on. It is notable that, in many cases, they provide users with some content or content-generating tools tapping into their database. Although most of their outputs are not “news” in the traditional sense, news sites as another type of information provider may import their legacy to their digital pages. If it is the case, this will result in the co-existence of a traditional news service and other added information services.
Furthermore, this trend might accompany a business-driven mind-set, affecting news presentation online. Offline newspapers traditionally keep clear demarcations between their news stories and the advertisers’ messages on their physical pages. Offline news media-associated online organizations, however, might have a somewhat urgent, business-driven interest to become financially independent. This speculation allows an idea of boundary blurring between “purely” editorial content and business-related content, dictated by insiders or by outsiders. For this study, any information services, links, and promotions other than traditional news content were sought and interpreted.
At first, the front pages run by major news Web sites showed a noticeable variability in their design features, update frequencies, added information services available, etc. This suggests the flexible or evolving nature of the design features on digital front pages. Nevertheless, five important trends were discerned through scanning these sites. In the following, these features as well as some theoretical interpretations are described.
Two types of indexing structure for effective information management. One of the most obvious design features on the web-based front pages was a left-side fixed column, which sometimes remains even when a human user moves to another sub-page by clicking a link. This column offered a list of categorized news subjects such as international, national, politics, business, technology, sports, weather, and so forth. By clicking any of these “subject” hyperlinks, a user moves to another web page relevant to the selected subject. This can be likened to turning over newspaper pages to look for a preferred section page, although this column generally included a more complex list of subject links that went beyond just a news section list on its paper version.
The front page of usatoday.com provided the most detailed list including subject links: for example, sports scores links specified “NCAA,” “NFL,” “NHL,” and “NBA.” Very often this column also listed, especially in the case of newspaper-supported Web sites, various additional information services that will be mentioned later. This column can be thought of as an indexing structure, although there was a difference in terms of whether it included just one index or several sub-index clusters.
Generally, this subject index does not usher a user into the actual news material; this job is done by a “headline” link, i.e., a term or phrase hypertext treats as a “full story” entry. By clicking a headline link, which is catalogued in a rather wide central area on the front page, a user accesses a relevant news story. In most cases, several headline links in the upper central part of a front page were visually grouped, one of which was treated as a main story and the others as “related stories.” In similar fashion, some headline links on the upper part of front pages accompanied summaries and sometimes pictures, somewhat similar to the design feature of print-based headlines on a newspaper.
The summary below its relevant headline link was a partial copying from the whole news text; this whole text was accessed through a user’s click on the link. This feature matches the “first a little, then a lot,” a rule in presenting any material on the Web (Fredin, 2000). The result of “first a little” is an index harnessed with a short explanation; this explanation is, say, nothing more than a text line shown directly more below a headline link. If a user clicks the link, “then a lot” appears as the desired whole story.
Despite the general trend of the distinguishing between subject index and headline links, the distinction between the two was a tricky one in the case of latimes.com. Its front page offered a slightly wide left column, which included several headline links below a categorized subject link, respectively. For example, a headline link of “Warning Signals Grow Louder for U.S. Economy” was placed just below a “Business” category in the left column, whereas the neighboring area on the right side featured a few of slightly large headline links accompanying pictures and summaries.
The feature of the indexing structure on the front pages of news sites suggests a new important function which is not seen in the front pages of traditional newspapers. The primary function of an offline newspaper’s front page can be generally stated as delivering the most valued daily news stories as judged by an editor. In case of the digital front page, the front page has the additional important function of indexing, which enables a user to have access to all possible daily news stories and other useful information.
Given the index-based news delivery on the Web, the evaluation of the indexing structure concerns a task-oriented question: How easily, quickly, correctly and widely does a human user search his/her desired news stories or other information, based on those indexes? Gordon, director of Access Atlanta, advises Web editors to design a “shallow structure” online by placing news on the first available screen. Because online readers are reluctant to click through several screens to find news content, according to Gordon, news should be located as close to the first available screen as possible (Reason, 1995).
This indexing feature also leads to some interesting academic questions as to the online experience of news reception. For example, there is some chance that the exposure to news stories will be polarized by whether or not they were selected by users. Exposure to selected news is accompanied by readers’ access to full information with their high involvement, while exposure to ignored news is nothing or little more than skimming over a headline service.
Limited use of news significance cues. The index structure for effective information management, however, is not the only factor to determine news delivery online. Rather, the indexing structure on front pages is colorized with news significance cues; online editors do not seem to want the total loss of news significance cue in return for stuffing the first available screen with as many mere news headlines as possible.
Technically speaking, most of the news significance cues in print media are possible on the Web pages: the location of a news story, the length of a news item, the size of its headline, the existence of an accompanying picture. In practice, however, use of them was very limited. Despite the presence of considerable variations, the typical treatment of news items on a digital front page can be put into three categories: (1) (sometimes packaged) top news stories, which are characterized by their placement, large headline, picture, summary called “preview,” etc, (2) premium stories, which are indicated by headlines, summary, and sometimes pictures, and (3) regular stories, which carry only headlines.
While the distinction between the premium stories and the regular stories was clearly dependent on whether or not a “story” had any accompaniment other than a headline link, the distinction between a (packaged) top story and premium stories was sometimes not so clear. The ABC- and CBS-affiliated news sites offered a design that clearly separated from, up to down, a packaged top story, premium stories, and regular stories. In other cases, the distinction between the top story and premium stories was indicated by the “layout” of the upper central area on the front pages. When it came to latimes.com, the packaged top story and premium stories were placed in the right-hand area, while most of the regular stories were integrated into the left subject index column.
The presentation of top stories and premium stories was therefore somewhat similar to the layout-based news presentation offline. The upper part of front pages, which can be seen without a scroll down, sometimes had a similar “layout” to their counterpart front pages offline. The front page on nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com provided a visual impression most similar to their printed versions, at least in the upper area on the front page available without scrolling down; two central columns were allocated to the headline links with their news significance cues in terms of the size of headline text and the presence of pictures and summary.
While many news sites allocated two central columns for news story links, abcnews.com and chicagotribune.com employed only one, - a slightly wide column for news story hypertexts and other accompaniments. The CBS-associated and Mercury News-associated news sites allocated two columns for headline links only in upper part where the top story’s links were located. The front pages of abcnews.go.com, cbsnews.cbs.com, chicagotribune.com, dallasnews.com, nytimes.com, and washingtonpost.com had a right-end column for additional information service and/or advertisement/promotion messages, which will be mentioned later.
Interestingly, some of the broadcast-associated sites, CBS and MSNBC, featured their top story as “overwhelmingly” top. Both of their top story packages were mainly characterized as an overtly large picture. On the CBS-associated front page, text hyperlinks were placed in the neighboring right side of a picture, while on the MSNBC-associated page text hyperlinks were overlapped on a large image. This design feature, reminiscent of “cover story” in a news magazine, seems to have a slightly different metaphor from the layout style of newspapers. Given the consideration that a news broadcast gives a highly salient news significance cue to the news story aired first, the presentation of an overwhelming top story package suggests the possibility that some online staffs follow their affiliated media criteria in their work.
All in all, except the top story and sometimes a few premium stories, most headline links were treated in a simplified and standardized hierarchy of news significance. In many cases, they were usually grouped and many of the groups were given nearly the same space when they were on the same level in terms of the simplified news significance hierarchy. For instance, the size of the space allocated to headline links below the title of “In World” was the same as that of the space for those below the title of “In National.” Also notable were the standardized format and size of banner ads. Parallel to the simplified hierarchy of news significance cue, most banner ads fell into one of two shapes – a long band or a small rectangle.
Except for top stories, whether or not the listing order of news items with the same news significance cues implied different news value was not so clear. For example, is the second headline on the news list under the title of “Politics” more important than the third headline? This question allows an interesting speculation as to the limitations in delivering the news value judgments offered by online news services. How do we measure and analyze the changed perceptions of news value – if indeed they are changed - by an online audience due to limited use of significance cues? How do we interpret and evaluate the implications of such limited use of cues? Do journalists have to just do their best to make online readers know their traditional, detailed, complicated news value judgments again? Or does this trend foreshadow the liberation of online readers from journalists’ fiat?
Visual indications of freshness. It is said that the strength of a broadcast lies in its “speed,” while the strength of newspapers lies in their “richness.” Technically, Web-based news presentation can treat both qualities seriously, by offering frequent and timely news updates, by making a special story more noticeable, and/or by offering a set of links to related news stories or other information resources.
As online news evolves, there appears to be a new attempt to articulate the freshness of news stories, aside from visual indications of news value judgments, based on traditional work routines on a daily basis. Except for abcnews.go.com, cbsnews.cbs.com and dallasnews.com, all news sites displayed the latest update time on their front pages. In case of CNN-, USA today-, and San Jose Mercury News-associated sites, they provided specific times for individual news stories posted. Although The New York Times’ Web site did not specify an upload time for the top story and premium stories, it notified of the specific time for regular stories, i.e., “just headline” stories in lower part of its front page. An online newspaper such as chicagotribune.com provided a posting time for a news story that was from the Associated Press’ news wire service.
Another indication of the visual rhetoric for freshness was the introduction of an independent category named “Breaking News” or “Latest News” as was done in latimes.com, merccenter.com, and nytimes.com. The front page of chicagotribune.com employed the title of “Latest News” to refer to all news story items other than the top story. In the case of cnn.com, this site used a title of “In Other News,” to list the latest news items. The nytimes.com also provided a latest news list under the title of “Latest AP/Reuters” on its front page. The related news story links in latimes.com had the small title “Update.”
The notice of update time or such expressions as “latest news” can be considered the clearest form of visual “rhetoric,” in the sense that these claim the freshness of the material posted on the Web. An online reader can make sure of the “newness” of the news story by looking at the update time marked on the digital page. Of course, an update itself does not mean the replacement of the entire material posted; it largely means a little correction, addition, deletion, or modification. Perhaps it gives an audience the impression of continuity.
From the position of a news organization, the possibility of frequent updates incurs an issue similar to the trouble that a newspaper organization faces in dealing with a developing news event. How do online news staffs tackle the problem of frequent updates and create their work routine in this new environment? How frequently and substantially do they modify their news presentation? What criteria are employed in their decisions? It should be noted that frequent updates are “guaranteed” by the Web-peculiar technical capability, but not by the news site’s financial and staff resources. Even the deemed-major ten selected Web sites seemed to differ in terms of the periodicity of update, although I did not examine actual differences.
As aforementioned, not all news sites can afford the burden to live up to the potential that the Web-based news presentation promises. The main reason lies in the difficulty for many news sites, especially local newspaper-based sites, to change the traditional work, which is arranged on a daily basis, to a new one based on a 24-hour basis. Thus, there is a huge gap between extremely-large-scale news organizations such as broadcast networks and national newspapers and, on the other hand, middle- or small-sized local newspapers (Hyun Ban & Tankard, 1998). Without a significant change, at least for the time being, this inequality may find more explicit expression on the Web in terms of visual indications of news “freshness.”
Visual indications of richness. Most news sites that I examined featured basically the same issue as their top story - the ongoing disputes over the results of the U.S. presidential election in late 2000. One sole exception was the San Jose Mercury News-associated site; it featured a local story as top. While most online news services displayed some related news headline links within a packaged top story, cnn.com was most obvious on its front page in listing related news stories, as well as related video files. When the author clicked through the top story links in the news sites, all of the news sites covering the issue provide related news stories, in-depth/analysis stories, legal documents, and other related links, as well as some multimedia files. Broadcast-based news sites generally had far more video files than newspaper-based counterparts. Given the “repurposed” nature of the news material from the parent media organizations, this is far from a surprise.
The plentiful list of related materials can give a human reader a visual impression of news “richness,” even though he/she actually clicks only a few of them. This impression was already reported by Fredin & David (1998), who wondered at the CNN-associated news site covering the 1996 U.S. presidential election.
…on a Web site such as CNN interactive, a typical news story about the 1996 presidential elections had links to stories on the same topic that were done earlier in the campaign. The earlier stories in turn were linked to each candidate’s home pages and platform positions. Some news stories were linked to the home pages of relevant federal agencies, to home pages of interest groups, or to enormous news archives such as Lexis/Nexis. The result is a massive and interconnected information network. (pp.35-36).
This successful impression can be explained not only by the technical capability of the WWW but also by the nature of the unusually salient issue of “Indecision 2000.” From election day and on, the actions by two presidential candidates – George Bush and Al Gore - and public officials and some citizens were covered every day and every time. There came out a number of legal documents as the Republican and Democratic’ camp rushed to the courts. Given the nature of the issue, the cumulative coverage was a natural result. The existence of cumulative coverage and resources easily available maximized the potential for the visual indication of news “richness.” Also remarkable was, despite the abundance of related news links, that a considerable part of the news richness in local newspapers, possibly came from the same sources, usually a wire service like the Associated Press. For instance, the top story of chicagotribume.com was from an AP news writer. A few critics were critical of many online papers for simply reproducing AP stories on their sites and called for online papers to individualize their stories and create their own local “spin” on national events (Noth,1996).
When it came to the top local stories covered by local online papers, only nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com offered related-story or related-sites links for the top local story within the same sub-page. Under the title of “New Hospitals for Young Patients,” nytimes.com provided three local medical centers’ sites; washingtonpost.com titled its local top story “Big Improvement in Prince George’s School” and gave three previous news story links, which were previously published in the same year. Except for the display of the subject index column or other headline links or local stories, there were not found the related links for local top stories in online newspapers.
One of the reasons that I failed to find abundant indications of richness might be ascribed to limiting my examination to front pages. It should be noted that, however, even though online surfers are “technically” empowered enough to navigate the sea of information at their will, this does not mean that most of the news stories posted on a news Web site are automatically equipped with a number of links such as “Related Stories,” “Related Audio/Videos" and “Related Websites.” Rather, this implies that placing a news story in a more complete context necessitates much labor by online staffs. In reality, it is a possible scenario that a worse situation is caused by the pressure for “speed,” or frequent updates. This situation may leave little time for more thoughtful reporting, web editing and designing.
Nevertheless, the indications of richness are one of the essential features of digital pages, just as the connectivity is a fundamental of the WWW. Fredin & David (1998) suggest that, through dynamic user interaction with a hypermedia story, a user creates his/her own “hypermedia interaction cycle.” All in all, the richness of Web-based news seems to remain one of the hugest potential goldmines waiting for journalists to exploit.
Boundary-blurring between journalism and other online services. Many major news Web sites now provide not only traditional news stories, but also additional information services. The broadcast-based national Web sites promoted their other affiliated specialized news or information sites: CBS Market Watch, CBS Entertainment, CBS Sports, CBS Health Watch, etc; CNN International, CNN Sports Illustrated, CNN Financial Network, CNN Airport Networks, etc. Some of those touch upon the notion expanding “news” to include other relevant.
This trend was more explicit in online local newspapers. All of local newspaper-based Web sites offered information services in addition to traditional news. Most online newspapers offered search functions for local weather or stock quotes and, more importantly, community services under the titles of “Marketplace,” “Calendar Live,” or “Entertainment Finding.” These categories were intended for users to find a variety of lists such as for homes, cars, jobs, rentals, and auctions; notices of local events, or a list of theaters, restaurants, bars, and nightclubs; and/or other special features. The washingtonpost.com’s Web site offered most diversified item lists for this purpose on the front page with link names of “Get Directions,” “Find a Job,” “Buy Tickets,” “Create Community_Web Sites,” “Cars,” “Real Estate,” “Shopping,” “Crime Reports,” “Yellow Pages,” “Metrorail Map,” etc. While national broadcast-based news sites provided links to specialized news/information services, major online newspapers were also trying to build strong ties to their local community.
Also remarkable is the influx of some business-driven interests in the design features of Web-based presentation. Some news sites went beyond the traditional listing of classified ads or notices of community occasions; they went so far as promotions of the Web site’s affiliated online shopping service in cases of merccenter.com, latimes.com, nytimes.com and usatoday.com. In particular, nytimes.com posted many banner ads with “special offers” on left- and right-end columns; the lower part of usatoday.com was also filled with a number of special offers from online vendors. The partnerships with other news media or informediary services were often visible on the front pages I analyzed. The CBS site included a promotion of Newsweek; the CNN sites included the promotion of Time; the Washington Post’s Web site included a promoted link to MSNBC. The online version of the Chicago Tribune’s site included search functions assisted by metromix.com and other Internet businesses, which were intended to find a variety of information such as community features. Other online newspapers also included several information search services partnered by Internet businesses such as hypergrabbers, infomediaries, content portals, auction services, etc. Sometimes the boundary line between the news site’s “own” services and explicit advertisements/ promotions was not so clear; chicagotribune.com, for example, provided a local features search function under the logo of an Internet business.
Admittedly, their common layout on front pages still kept the visual demarcation between the areas assigned for traditional news service and other types of service. The news items were located in one or two central column(s), whereas miscellaneous services were frequently - but not always - placed in marginal columns, i.e., the left- and/or right-end ones. Nevertheless, this trend implies the inclusion of customized information services and content portal, infomediary, and/or on-line shopping functions, which were previously initiated by other Internet businesses. Since the newspapers’ commercial interest in local community service and the status-enhancement of online staffs go together, this trend possibly contributes to some boundary blurring between traditional journalism and newly acquired commercial/ information services.
This feature allows a speculation, concerning a change - though subtle - in the traditional notion of “news.” In the new Internet era, people tend to associate what they are doing online with the material called “information.” Under the generalized rubric of information, the traditional separation between “pure” news and other information is increasingly blurred. This trend might be more complicated due to the influx of business or commercial-related information such as “special offers.” Going beyond just a repurposed version of newspapers or broadcasts, the evolution of online news service may encourage the intermingling of the news and other information and, subsequently, the broadening of the twilight zone between the two. If this speculation is reaffirmed by some empirical support, this boundary blurring heralds a serious challenge to the basic tenets of the modern journalism.
Previous research on online news services has been focusing on its technical capability for interactivity, which was largely regarded as forms of more options, more feedback mechanisms, and easier upload of audience responses. Although this technical aspect deserves attention and examination, it is still reasonable to assume that the major role of a news Web site lies in providing the information we call “news.” To better understand both the state-of-the-art and the potential of online journalism, an examination of web-based news presentations can be useful.
As already mentioned, this study was intended as a workout of a theoretical framework, which was accompanied by a brief analysis of journalistic practices in the on-line world. Despite considerable limitation of my analysis, I was able to identify some characteristics of Web-based news presentation. All of these can be summarized again as three traits – the indexing structure with limited news significance cues, the visual rhetoric of news freshness and richness, the trend toward coexistence and boundary blurring of traditional news and other added information.
The first characteristic implies the need for online staffs to develop a creative negotiation between the two imperatives of effective information management and, on the other hand, delivery of news value judgments. The second one touches upon the dilemma between the promise of approaching ideal journalism and the actual difficulty caused by the resources-consuming efforts by fledging online organizations. The last consideration concerns the possible changes in the culture surrounding journalism in the future. Also these characteristics can, I think, serve foundations for further research, both task-oriented and academic.
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