Internet Newspapers: The Making of a Mainstream Medium

Citation

Parry, F. (2006), "Internet Newspapers: The Making of a Mainstream Medium", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 752-753. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610716270

The rise of online newspapers has been one of the more spectacular success stories of the internet in the last decade. This work is a collection of research studies, all similarly laid out with methods, findings, discussion and conclusion sections. It is divided into three parts: “Information delivery and access”; “The interactive process”; and “The impact on the public and public conscious”.

The first part begins with a longitudinal study of the evolution of online newspapers from 1997 to 2003 in the USA. It is an impressively detailed survey which looks at news content and presentation, multimedia, interactivity, revenue sources and circulation size of the corresponding print version and is an excellent introduction to the subject. There follows an analysis of web page design and graphic use with some interesting observations about why the use of graphics is surprisingly low. The next chapter uses network theory to explain the declining use of external links on news web sites. The author believes that there is a corresponding increase in internal links as these sources build up their archives and that this trend will continue. This makes a rough kind of sense, as some publishers will not want their readers navigating away from the home site, although looking at several British internet newspapers by way of comparison, I was interested to see plentiful use of external links. Two good chapters on how news retrieval efficiency is affected by web page design follow. The final chapter in this section is a psychological study on how cognitive flexibility theory can be used to convey complex issues within a news story and addresses such issues as the reading experience and basic cognitive processing of news. I am pleased to say that the psychological jargon not quite as daunting as I had feared.

The second part looks at the interactive process between internet newspapers and their print counterparts and other relationships such as cross‐media partnerships. It begins with an excellent study on the growing influence of internet newspapers and rather surprisingly concludes that it has little effect on an already declining newspaper circulation. The following chapters look at interpersonal and content interactivity, general management of interactive facilities and the resources and facilities needed to set it up. The final two chapters in this section are case studies on the market relation between online and print newspapers in Austin, Texas and Hong Kong. These are particularly interesting and display revealing snapshots of internet and print newspaper readership, reading behaviour and local newspaper market forces.

The final part begins with the rather awkwardly titled “Utilities of online and offline news use”, which translates as reader satisfaction with online and print newspapers and headlines skimming. One chapter examines the purported connection between online newspapers and cyber democracy and local civic involvement, and another the newspaper forums which have been created to promote reader interactivity and discussion. The penultimate chapter shows how web layout and design affect reader interests and priorities – much like a print newspaper, in fact, although the authors did not draw attention to this. The final chapter redresses the balance with a direct comparison between online and print newspaper lead stories.

This is a comprehensive collection of studies based on some impressive research. Internet newspapers have moved on since these studies were undertaken, and it is to be hoped that future research will look at the use of blogs, podcasts and “news on the move” with a similar rigorous approach to that used here.