E-Media Tidbits

Round-the-clock online news. While many newspapers aspire with their websites to publish news whenever it happens, the reality is that the industry has a long way to go. That's the conclusion of new research published today (on Online Journalism Review) by University of Texas at Austin researchers Rosental Calmon Alves (who holds the Knight Chair at the School of Journalism) and Amy Schmitz Weiss (a doctoral student). The researchers last year closely tracked 30 U.S. newspaper sites (selected from Editor & Publisher's list of the top 100), watching for how often and what time of day they published updated news. Of the 30, only 12 updated their homepages frequently, and the rest made few or no changes during the day. Five of the sites made virtually no updates during the day -- they published pretty much on a once-a-day schedule, just like their print parents. (The tracking period was between June 23 and July 4, 2003, excluding weekends.)

Broken down by size of newspaper circulation, the amount of change in the homepage content was greatest for the largest papers' sites (predictably). Of the top 10 newspapers, their sites accounted for 56 percent of all changes recorded in the study. The smaller a paper's circulation, the higher likelihood for fewer updates through the day on its homepages. The papers that had the most updates during the day were (in order) Newsday (203 changes per day); USA Today (148); Houston Chronicle (138); Chicago Tribune (133); New York Times (128); Los Angeles Times (121); Washington Post (115); Wall Street Journal (86).

In terms of type of news changed during the day, 47 percent was "hard news"; 30 percent was "soft news"; and 23 percent was a combination of both. Most changes (91 percent) were in text, with very little change in photos and graphics. And here's something really interesting: Only 8 percent of overall changes represented stories moving up or down the homepage (that is, ranking/placement on the page). Stories tended to just disappear rather than be re-ordered to reflect new and more important news.

The researchers already have collected the same data for the same time period this year. Alves says he hopes to publish a journal article this fall detailing the 2004 findings. It'll be fascinating to see if there's been any improvement in the last year.