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Young People ‘Fatigued’ By Digital News
June 03, 2008 03:05 PM
by
Liz Colville
A new study says young people are overloaded with facts when reading news online. Media outlets are changing their reporting styles in response.
30-Second Summary
“Consumers’ news diets are out of balance due to the over-consumption of facts and headlines,” according to Robbie Blinkoff, cofounder of Context-Based Research Group. Younger generations, relying chiefly on “digital news” sources, are hard pressed to find deep coverage of headlines.
The group’s report was commissioned by the Associated Press in 2007 and was presented June 2 at the World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden.
In response to the findings, the Associated Press has developed a system called “1-2-3 filing,” under which it posts news first as headline information, then as brief present-tense stories, and finally longer stories with background information.
Other news sources, like the U.K.’s Telegraph, have followed suit online and reaped the benefits of more Web site visitors.
Generations X and Y are seen as pioneers of multitasking, yet despite frequent checking of headlines—what the study calls a “sign of boredom”—young people claim to still want resources on the background and context of those headlines.
A recent study by Nielsen Online reports that users are spending more time than they did in 2007 on many top news Web sites, including Politico.com, as well as the Web sites of newspapers the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times.
The group’s report was commissioned by the Associated Press in 2007 and was presented June 2 at the World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden.
In response to the findings, the Associated Press has developed a system called “1-2-3 filing,” under which it posts news first as headline information, then as brief present-tense stories, and finally longer stories with background information.
Other news sources, like the U.K.’s Telegraph, have followed suit online and reaped the benefits of more Web site visitors.
Generations X and Y are seen as pioneers of multitasking, yet despite frequent checking of headlines—what the study calls a “sign of boredom”—young people claim to still want resources on the background and context of those headlines.
A recent study by Nielsen Online reports that users are spending more time than they did in 2007 on many top news Web sites, including Politico.com, as well as the Web sites of newspapers the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times.
Headline Link: ‘Young Adults Hit by “News Fatigue”’
Context-Based Research Group’s 71-page report covered seven metropolitan areas in the United States, the U.K. and India, and surveyed people aged 18–34. In the abstract of the report, available on the research group’s Web site, the authors write that the young news readers surveyed are “overloaded with facts and updates and had trouble connecting to more in-depth stories.”
Source: Time
Background: AP shifts focus in digital age of news
The New York Times reported in December 2007 on the Context-Based Research Group’s findings and how they have helped transform the Associated Press into what industry insiders are calling “AP 2.0.” Observing the diminishing sizes of newsrooms across the world, AP has actually grown, but taken more than a hint from rivals’ stumbles. One of the company’s goals is to “rev up news” by regionalizing news coverage and “get[ting] editors in the regional bureaus back into reporting.”
Source: The New York Times
The Editors Weblog, a publication of the World Editors Forum, explains AP’s development of “1-2-3 filing.” Perhaps the most important component of this new system is the third step. After filing a headline and a short story, “AP editors and reporters then think of the best way—or media—to tell the story. In some cases, this is simply a 500-word story. In others, an interactive graphic or video are more appropriate. Some stories don't have a third step: the 130-word sum-up was sufficient. Others ‘blossom into many stories.’”
Source: The Editors Weblog
Related Topics: Readers gain editorial influence, stay longer at top news sites
News media’s “digital age” means several things, including a turn from basic editorial decisions made offline to decisions made by regular Internet users. Digg.com, for example, uses a voting system to rank news articles. Mike Arrington, editor of the blog Tech Crunch, said in 2007 that such sites will “fundamentally change the way news is consumed by consumers even more than blogs are—and transform journalists' jobs in the process.”
Source: Cyber Journalism
Editor & Publisher magazine reported on Nielsen Online’s recent study uncovering trends in the time users spend on top news Web sites. “In April [2008] slightly more than one-third of the top 30 newspaper Web sites grew the average time spent per person.” Newspapers like the New York Times and the Village Voice made modest gains online. Regional papers like the Seattle Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune made more substantial headway.
Source: Editor & Publisher Magazine
Reference: ‘A New Model for News’
Context-Based Research Group’s full report is available on its Web site as a PDF. It includes an explanation of the authors’ methods and why ethnography and anthropology, the group’s specialties, were the chosen approach. Also included are profiles of some of the survey participants and their individual experiences with news.
Source: The Associated Press
© 2009 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
