Why we did the study

One of the great strengths of the Web is the ability to keep news updated and to alert readers immediately to stories they need to know about. This is also one of the biggest organizational changes the Web has brought to newsrooms. Shifting from daily to constant deadlines has caused a rethinking of work flow, editing, and reporting responsibilities.

But questions remain about the best way to ensure that these updated or breaking news items are presented on the page for greatest visibility. Judging from the wide variety of design techniques newsrooms use to designate breaking news, there is no consensus on the best approach.

In May 2007 the top 102 US newspapers’ websites were analyzed to catalog the different ways “breaking” news was being displayed. We looked at labels used to indicate news was updated or new and the design techniques for differentiating “breaking” news from other news items on the homepage.

Labeling: Thirty-four of the online news sites examined had no designation of “breaking” news. Of the 68 sites that did:

• 31% used some version of “Breaking”
• 30% used some version of “Latest”
• 14% used some version of “Update”
• 25% used miscellaneous labels including “Developing News”, “News Flash”, “News Bulletin”, “News Alert”, “Up to the Minute.”

Design: The methods used to designate, design-wise, the “freshest” news items on the page varied, and were often combined.

• 12% tagged individual stories with “New” or “Updated’, usually in a bold color
• 57% put “updated” stories in a box
• 62% timestamped the entire page and / or individual stories

It was clear that no conventions had been established for designating those news items that were freshest or most recently updated.

We designed the study to get at the following questions:

• Did the design choices made to designate updated content affect the user’s recognition of which items were new or updated?
• Would the design aid, or impede, the likelihood that the news user would find, read, and remember news items most recently added to the site?

How we did the study

We worked with the Minneapolis Star Tribune to get daily feeds of their homepage. We inserted into the “live” page a fake “breaking news” story (about a tank truck accident and subsequent chemical spill shutting down a major highway in town.) Each day of the testing, our designer created three test “home pages” using the top three ways updated news is being designated on websites – timestamp, labeled, boxed – to distinguish this “breaking news” story from the others on the page.

Version 1: Timestamped

Version 2: “New” placed next to updated story

Version 3: Updated story headlines in a separate box

Participants: We wanted to study a wide array of online users in this research so we took the eyetracking equipment to two locations in Minneapolis: the student union at the University of Minnesota (where the demographics were largely young, Anglo adults), and the Midtown Global Market Downtown (where the participants represented a wide range of demographics – age, race, education.) In all, 96 participants were tested, divided into each of the three conditions.

After the eyetrack calibration, research participants were asked to go to the homepage and “just look around.” They were told they could look however long they wanted and could click on whatever they wanted. When they indicated they were done, they were asked a couple of questions:

• What are the main stories you recall from the website?
  The response to this question could be checked against the eyetrack video. Was it clear they “saw” the updated story yet did not list it as one of the stories they remembered?
• What was it about these stories that made you remember them?
  The response to this open-response question helped catalog the attributes of the news story that made it memorable.
• Which of the stories on the website was identified as a “news update” // or which of the news stories was the most recently updated?
  This question sought to discover if people, in fact, recognized that there was a story that was designated differently than the others.
• Do you try to find the most current story when you go to a news website?
  This question would allow the researchers to see if there was a difference in response from users who are self-proclaimed “fresh” news seekers from those who are not.
• On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 not at all interested and 5 very interested) how interested are you in: Politics, Crime, Traffic Reports, Sports
  This question could help researchers to see if interest in a news topic (in this case traffic) resulted in a higher degree of recall.

Findings

Both the eyetracking videos and the post-exposure survey responses were analyzed and matched – the videos to see whether participants eyes “fixated” on the breaking news visual cue and the survey to see their responses to the post-exposure questions. Here are some of the key findings:

Finding 1: Bigger is Better – or is it? In terms of visual cues, it was clear from the results of the eyetrack sessions that the larger the cue, the more likely it was to be noticed. By visual cue, the percent of participants exposed to that style of display who fixated:

But when participants were asked in the post-exposure survey to say which story on the homepage was the most recent or which was the breaking news item, the participants exposed to the timestamp (35%) and “new” pages (32%) had greater recognition of the freshest news than those exposed to the headline box (20%). Even though 89% of the people exposed to the headline box page clearly looked at it, only 20% of them recalled any breaking news story.

What might this mean? Although the headline box drew more eyes, the headline text size in the box was smaller than the other two display styles. Headline text size may be an important factor in user’s memory of a story. So, although boxing the headlines made that visual element on the page more broadly seen, the small size of the headline type within the box made the recall of the story weaker.

Finding 2: Story Attributes Participants were asked in the post-exposure survey “What was it about the stories you recalled on the page that made you remember them?” Their open responses were analyzed and categorized (for example, if they said “I remembered that story because it happened near where I live.” Or “I drive that highway every day.” the response would have been coded as proximity or familiarity. If they said “I remembered it because of the color photo next to it” it would have been coded as “photo.” Here are the categories and findings:

The attributes of the story and what made people recall them fell into two categories: personal and design. By far (66% vs 24%) it was the personal triggers (interest in the topic, proximity, familiarity, emotional response) rather than design cues (size / position on page, photo, hyperlinked headline) that were given as reasons for recalling the story.

Observations: The old adage “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” probably fits here. If there isn’t interest, the design may well not have any impact.

There is a good deal more observations we can make based on this research, look for more results in future OJR columns.

1. Newspapers: Get a breaking news blog

I asked several friends of OJR to suggest their favorite news sites and features of the past year, and many Southern California neighbors pointed toward the coverage of this year’s wildfires by the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s SignonSanDiego.com.

In May, I wrote about the Los Angeles Times’ use of a breaking news blog to keep readers informed about that month’s wildfires, which struck the city’s popular Griffith Park.

Blogs are the ideal format for breaking news, as they allow newsrooms to swiftly publish little bits of information, as they are confirmed, and without having to weave them into a traditional story format. They also make it easy for readers to see “the latest” on a developing story, rewarding the reader and making it easier for traditional-print newsrooms to compete with the immediacy of broadcast media.

2. Get widget love

Text, photos and video are just three of the tools available to online news publishers, with which to engage readers and hook ‘em into spending more time with your site.

Millions of Web readers are using online widgets, from embedded YouTube videos to online polls, to dress up their blogs, personal websites and Facebook and MySpace pages. There’s nothing keeping news publishers from using these same tools, as well.

That was not the case this time last week.

On Friday, Sept. 28, the Myanmar government effectively shut down all cell-phone and Internet communication, stunting a citizen-journalism movement that had itself drawn international recognition.

The state-controlled media in Myanmar has been tight-lipped, to say the least. Communication with international news organizations has been spotty, and soldiers continue to turn reporters away at the borders. The message has been clear: “Nothing to see here.”

But armed with cell phones, cameras and laptops, common citizens and protesters stepped in to expose the conflict in real time. Some ran blogs of their own. Many dispatched pictures and videos of police violence to off-shore bloggers and news sites. Either way, they loosened the government’s chokehold on communication.

Now, with the ebb and flow of information from within at a standstill, the offshore sites are left to sustain awareness. A brand-new site out of Germany, Free-Burma.org, calls on bloggers around the world to post a “Free Burma” awareness graphic on any posts today, Oct. 4. Organizer Philipp Hausser talked to us about “International Bloggers’ Day For Burma” and the impact of Myanmar’s citizen-journalist phenomenon.

Online Journalism Review: First off, can you tell me a little about the history of your site?

Phillip Hausser: The original idea came from a Blogger in Italy. The well-known German blogger Robert Basic had an idea “to do something” and asked what could be done. Many comments; different opinions. Everything was discussed in a Wiki and the idea of an international blogger day was born.

Christian Hahn [Hausser's partner] and I found that this was a good idea to show the people in Burma our solidarity for their peaceful protests. To help the action to get better organized (the wiki was and is still very unorganized) we decided overnight to set up the domain and build a website.

OJR: And how have results been so far?

Hausser: It’s now in seven different languages, with an overwhelming success: Over 10,000 visitors came just in the first 24 hours, and over 30,000 visitors to date. The site [launched] Sunday.

The reason for so many visitors is a good working network. People spread the message within ours around the globe and many people joined.

And yes, the support was great! We reached many, many people in almost every country and had media coverage around the globe – all in 4 days.

Let’s see what happens on Oct. 4.

OJR: What sort of goals have you set for the site?

Hausser: The situation in Burma is getting more and more quiet in the last days; not because of a better situation, but because the military is trying to avoid any outgoing communication.

We want to keep this “burning topic” on top in the media. The bloody pictures are getting fewer every day, and the media are losing their interest to report about the topic. We want so set a peaceful sign to keep it on peoples’ minds.

OJR: Do you have a sense of how effective the government shutdown of Internet and cell-phone lines has been? How long did it take to figure out that outside communications had been halted?

Hausser: We/the bloggers realized very quickly that there was no more connection to Burma. Hours later the media spread the news. And yes, it was effective. Most blogs about Burma are written outside Burma (see our blog list on f-b.org). the blogs inside stopped refreshing and the remaining bloggers are afraid for their lives. They have taken pictures of themselves down from their blogs so the government can’t find them. Everybody there is in danger.

OJR: What are citizen journalists in Myanmar doing now to get information out of the country? Have they been able to get around the government barriers? If so, how?

Hausser: Not sure. But we know that it is not easy. They talk/write less about Burma every day. We try to stop that.

OJR: How are the off-shore blogs and sites like yours dealing with the block of information flow?

Hausser: To be honest, currently I’m more and more dealing with interviews and communication than working for the page. The response is overwhelming, more than we ever expected.

OJR: You’ve really tried to spread the word with Wiki, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, etc. How successful have those social media tools been in spreading awareness?

Hausser: Facebook is not directly connected with us, but they are promoting the action. Top referrers are Stumbleupon and ko-htike.blogspot.com. We used Flickr for the graphics collection, and the wiki as a democratic element to collect ideas, translations and everything else.

OJR: Finally, do you have a particular, numeric goal in mind for the big Burma blog day on Oct. 4?

Hausser: No, nothing. The visitor counter is growing very rapidly, as are subscriptions (see the news page for updates). But like I said: This is more than we ever expected, and no one knows what’s going on today/tomorrow. But I’m sure it will be a lot!

For a magazine/Web outlet designed to bring information to readers, Wired sure selected a media-light crowd of exhibitors this year. Just eight out of 162 exhibits had anything to do with communications. And really, only Yahoo’s presentation had much of interest to anyone working in online media. (The rest were cool 3D displays, cellphone activated lightshows, installation art of instant messaging, etc.)

What gives? Where were all the next-gen social media applications, the iPhonery, the streaming video delivery stuff? NextFest opted for the wow-factor of robots and lightshows and missed out on what actually changes our lives.

I had a chat with Ben Clemens, Director of the Design Innovation Team at Yahoo, who also did a stint at the online portion of the New York Times.

Ben explained that his team is working on a unique app that will visually chart Web searches in real time and map them onto a model of the globe. Playing back the data will give an insight into how searches spread and develop over geographic space and over time. I thought it would be tremendously useful for journalists following the news cycle of a story, so I asked him about the model. (Partial transcript follows the video.)

Ben Clemens: The idea is there there search burst events which are lots and lots of people looking for the same thing at the same time and we want be be able to visualize that and show what’s the geographic pattern that they are looking for.

OJR: What sort of application might this have for tracking the way people follow a news story, for example?

Right now what you’re seeing is a fairly coarse level of data, but what we’d like to get to is the point where we can actually see as a story unfolded pegging the spread of search queries in some sort of more local event. One of the data sets that we’re actually working on right now is the bridge collapse, we wanted to track on a very local basis how it was that the searches spread, because that started as a very local event and then became a national event. Right now we don’t have the fine grain of geo-coding we would need to actually do that, but that’s the next thing we are working on.

OJR: Would then news websites want to tailor their news offerings based upon real time what people are interested in specific locations?

Ben: I think probably journalists will make their own decisions, but I think it’s good information to get from actual user data. This is what people are actually doing, as opposed to what they say they are interested in.

OJR: Does this connect with Yahoo News at the moment?

Ben: This is an experiment; it is not part of any Yahoo product. We would like to take advantage of it in Yahoo products going forward but for now we’re just at the bleeding edge trying to figure out how we would use this. Just the mechanism to get the data and to individualize it are a lot of the mechanics that we are working on right now. If that gets to a good enough state, then we would talk to products.

OJR: How far down the line is that?

Ben: (Laughs.) I really can’t say.

Ben then showed me an austere white-on-white globe of the earth with slow-moving blue specks shooting out from the surface of the North American continent. He explained that each speck represents a search query instance and that the speed and thickness of the particle streams indicate the popularity of the search. The data set at hand was a Yahoo search for “Mattel,” immediately following the lead-in-toys story that drove worried parents by the thousands to the Internet to search for their child’s toy.

Interesting stuff, and sure to give us too much information about ourselves down the line.

Other than than, NextFest was a bit of a bust from a journalist’s perspective. I mean, don’t get me wrong: the Google Lunar X Prize announcement was uber-cool (journalist was third on my list of childhood aspirations, astronaut and paleontologist being numbers one and two), but really, the lack of media eyecandy was disappointing. I would have thought it would have been a perfect fit for OJR–Wired is journalism that brings you technology and OJR is journalism about technology that brings you journalism–but eh, so it goes. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

How many acres have burnt now? How much of the fire is contained? Where’s the worst threat at this hour? For those essential questions, which readers wanted immediate answers, the Times’ breaking news blog delivered.

Newspaper.com managers, take a lesson. If you do not have a breaking news blog ready to go on your website, get started on building one. Today. The blog is the ideal format to deliver information in a breaking news situation. There’s no reason to continue relying on traditional newspaper narrative formats online when editors could better serve their readers with the far more online-friendly blog format.

I discovered the power of breaking news blogging during the Columbine High School shootings in April 1999. At the time, I was the executive producer of the Rocky Mountain News’ website, in charge of its editorial operations. Despite the fact that the Rocky then sold more papers in the Denver metro area than any other publication, we were a small staff, as was typical at newspapers at the time, usually with only one or two online editorial employees on the clock at any given moment.

When the shooting happened, as with any major breaking news story, the demand for information was immediate. The Rocky was preparing a extra edition for that afternoon, but we couldn’t wait for those stories to clear the copy desk. So I blew up our hand-built, flat-file website home page and started using a bullet-point list to provide the latest facts and data we could find, in reverse chronological order.

I was blogging, though no one I knew had ever used that term yet. Nor did we have blogging software; I wrote our updates in HTML and FTP’ed them to our server. But I loved the format. We got updates from Rocky reporters via a helpful newsroom editor (remember back when union issues at many papers precluded reporters from producing work directly for their websites?), watched televised sheriff’s press conferences, listened to police scanners, scoured the wires, made calls to neighbors and I posted every piece of information we found, attributing it to the source where we got it and noting where it conflicted with other information that had been reported on our site or on TV.

When the paper’s extra edition stories were ready, we posted those to the site, but by then, our news blog had even more up-to-the-minute information. Without having to take the time to do a write-through whenever we had new information, we could get that information online faster. And readers did not have to wade through a write-through to find the newest facts and data.

“Using blogs to cover breaking news can be a great benefit to the reader, especially on fast-moving stories,” latimes.com editor Meredith Artley wrote in an e-mail when I asked her about the Times’ recent efforts. “With the Griffith Park and Catalina fires, the developments were coming in so quickly — percentage of the fire contained, evacuation information, anecdotes from people living the experience. In an article format, some of these developments may be lost somewhere in the 3rd, 4th, 5th paragraph of the story. With a blog, it’s crystal-clear what’s fresh.”

With blogging software now so widely available, there’s no excuse for newspaper editors not to turn to blogging when major news breaks. Nor should editors have to invent a reporting process on the fly, like I did eight years ago. Here are some steps that newspaper.com editors should take to prepare their newsrooms to publish a top-quality breaking news blog the next time a major story breaks in their community.

1) Select a blogging tool and have it ready to go.

This step might seem obvious, but there’s more to it than one might envision. Ideally, your blogging tool should support tagging or categorization, so that you can have a unique URL for each breaking news story. What happens if you have two stories that break close enough to each other that they overlap? Or if a person Googling for information about an old breaking news story finds your URL? Tagging or categorizing each post should enable you to create an unique URL for each story, rather than sending all readers to the same newspaper.com/breakingnews URL. You might not think that you’ll need this functionality now. But if you take a little extra time to build it in now, you will thank yourself later.

Part of having your tool ready to go is to decide how the blog will be linked to from your front page, as well as the rest of the site. “A reader… seemed to misunderstand that the posts were from reporters, not readers,” Artley wrote e about the Times’ fire blogs. “And there were a couple of comments from folks who seemed unpleasantly surprised to be clicking on a headline or photo and getting a blog instead of an article. So we’re considering ways to signal that better, but I don’t want to get into overlabeling the site.”

2) Identify and train your bloggers.

It’s not enough to have one or two people assigned to blog breaking news. You need to identify and train enough bloggers so that one of them will be in the building at all times. You also need to ensure that someone else can cover the bloggers’ “normal” routines, since the bloggers will be too busy during breaking news.

You’ll also need a plan for how information will get to the bloggers. Establish a central e-mail address, phone number and/or instant message account to take bulletins from staff reporters and make sure everyone in the newsroom knows them. In a breaking news situation, off-duty reporters and even those not on the metro desk often have the first reports from the scene.

Artley suggests testing your blog reporting process in a controlled environment, such as during a trial.

“We had a test drive with the Phil Spector trial blog,” she wrote. “We knew we would have reporters with Blackberries in the courtroom. We got to set it up and plan. We also tried the breaking news blog again with the immigration march downtown, and, again, we planned how that would work — who would file, who would post, who would approve comments, and who would take care of images. Of course it doesn’t all go smoothly, but if you can plan a little bit, you’ll be much more prepared for when news breaks.”

This is also the time to make an organizational decision on what sources you will report in your blog. Will you cite what TV stations or other competitors report?

3) Have a plan to backread and edit the blog.

You should not insist on posts going through the normal newspaper editing process before hitting the blog. You won’t ever beat TV, radio or other blogs that way. But someone should be assigned the task of reading posts as they go live, to immediately correct typos, misspellings or other obvious factual errors. (I found a few lingering goofs on the Times blog last week.) Don’t assume that someone in the building, or some reader, will tip you to errors. Make sure someone specific is charged with this important duty.

4) Go for broke.

Once you have this system in place, why reserve it for infrequent occasions?

A newspaper reporter at an industry seminar last fall asked me what her organization could do to improve its front page design. I told her, “Make it a breaking news blog.”

I think one of the reasons that Kevin Roderick’s enjoyed such success with his LAObserved site is that many people prefer reading a blog-style narrative to picking their way through the mess of hyperlinks that compose the typical newspaper.com home page. Roderick reads dozens of stories from local Los Angeles media each weekday and selects the best of them to summarize and link on his blog. It’s a broadcast news writing model, really. But it works.

Why not assign sharp editors to be your “anchor” on each shift through the day, blogging your paper by selecting and summarizing the best stories, as they become available? (Readers who want to drill down to other information on the site may still use the site’s navigation to find specific sections’ story archives and other features.) And in a breaking news situation, the front page blog can morph into the breaking news blog.

Either way, the readers in your community will come to see your paper’s home page as the place to go for a friendly, authoritative voice that provides the very latest news about their community. And after all, isn’t that what a newaspaper website’s home page ought to be?