News fatigue

Study shows young adults hit by 'news fatigue'

By KARL RITTER, Associated Press WriterMon Jun 2, 12:33 AM ET

Young adults experience news fatigue from being inundated by facts and updates and have trouble accessing in-depth stories, according to a study to be unveiled at a global media conference Monday.

The Context-Based Research Group, an ethnographic research firm, found that the news consumption behavior of younger readers differs profoundly from that of previous generations.

The research project, commissioned by The Associated Press in 2007, analyzed the news consumption patterns of an ethnically diverse group of 18 men and women between the ages of 18 and 34 in six cities in the United States, Britain and India.

It ultimately helped AP design a new model for news delivery to meet the needs of young adults, who are driving the shift from traditional media to digital news, said Jim Kennedy, AP's director of strategic planning.

"The real value was that it gave us a lasting model of how news is being consumed in the digital space by young people that we can use to improve our own newsgathering and project development," Kennedy said.

That includes what the AP calls "1-2-3 filing," starting with a news alert headline for breaking news, followed by a short present-tense story that is usable on the Web and by broadcasters. The third step is to add details and format stories in ways most appropriate for various news platforms.

Editors at the Telegraph in London are following a similar approach and have seen a big jump in traffic at the newspaper's Web site. The study said the Telegraph has adopted the mind-set of a broadcast-news operation to quickly build from headlines to short stories to complete multimedia packages online to boost readership.

The study's purpose was to obtain a deeper and more holistic understanding of the news consumption behavior of younger audiences. The results were scheduled to be presented Monday in a 71-page report to media executives and editors from around the globe at the World Editors Forum in Goteborg, southwestern Sweden.

A key finding was that participants yearned for quality and in-depth reporting but had difficulty immediately accessing such content because they were bombarded by facts and updates in headlines and snippets of news.

The study also found that participants were unable to give full attention to the news because they were almost always simultaneously engaged in other activities, such as reading e-mail. That represents a shift from previous consumption models in which people sat down to watch the evening news or read the morning paper.

"Our observations and analysis identified that consumers' news diets are out of balance due to the over-consumption of facts and headlines," said Robbie Blinkoff, co-founder and head anthropologist at Baltimore, Md.-based Context-Based Research Group.

To combat that, the authors recommended that news producers develop easier ways for readers to discover in-depth content and to avoid repetitious updates of breaking news.

The research was conducted in six major metropolitan areas around the globe: Houston, Silicon Valley, Philadelphia and Kansas City in the United States; Brighton, Britain; and Hyderabad, India.

___

On the Net:

Full report: http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press.

The Independent - Print Article

Independent.co.uk

America's grim newspaper story

Circulations are falling and some pundits believe that newspapers in the United States will be dead in a generation. But some proprietors actually want to shed readers. By Stephen Foley

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Extra, extra, read all about it. Newspaper circulations in freefall. Readers desert to the internet. Abandon hope, all ye who enter print journalism.

Newspaper circulation has been dropping steadily in most of the developed world for many years, but the armageddonists are firmly in the ascendancy, particularly in the US, where they have taken to specifying a date on which the last newspaper will be printed in the country. (October 2044 on current trends, according to the American Journalism Review.)

The latest round of grim circulation data, which was published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations this week, showed such a sharp acceleration in the downtrend that the date might have to be brought forward. The ABC survey of 534 of the largest daily newspapers found a 3.6 per cent decline in the six months to 31 March, compared to the same period a year ago. In the previous six-month period, the year-on-year decline was 2.6 per cent. A year ago it was 2.1 per cent. Papers in the biggest metropolitan areas are hurting most; Sunday editions are dropping most steeply of all. The august New York Times, which is distributed across the country, lost 9.3 per cent of its Sunday readership in the last six months. The figures looked bad enough to make newspaper executives choke on their cereals when they appeared in yesterday's editions.

Only here's the real scoop: this is not all bad news for the industry, and in many cases, the figures are exactly what managers wanted and worked towards.

Eh? Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for journalists, explains that - while many former newspaper readers are indeed now satisfied getting their news from the internet – this is only part of the story.

"It is 50-50 between the rise of the internet and what Gary Pruitt, chief executive of [the regional newspaper company] McClatchy described last week as 'managed circulation reduction'. He said that they were no longer sending papers out into the boondocks, where distribution is expensive and it is an area that advertisers do not really care about."

In short, newspaper executives are making a hard-headed judgement that not all readers are created equal, at least not in the eyes of advertisers.

"There is a lot of 'ego circulation', but with newsprint prices going up, with transportation costs going up, anyone looking at the business model will say that there are copies that they don't have to print," says one analyst at a fund management firm. "Paid newsstand sales and home delivery, these are the prized readers. Now companies are thinking about trimming superfluous distribution. Many companies have previously been reluctant to touch circulation, because all it does is throw gasoline on the fire. They are all being accused of being dinosaurs, of having their heads in the sand. Deliberately cutting back on circulation simply generates another story about how bad the business is, but it can in fact be a much more rational business decision."

The New York Times, for example, said its Sunday sales drop was deliberate, since it was not renewing special offers such as giving the paper away to daily subscribers. Throughout the industry, over the past few months, executives have been explaining that saving money – and therefore saving newspapers – requires sacrificing some readers.

No less a person than Rupert Murdoch was persuaded. When he was bidding for The Wall Street Journal, the nation's No 2 paper by circulation, he said he expected to scrap subscription fees for the paper's website (whose paying subscribers are included in the ABC figures), and believed he would make up the lost revenue when advertisers flocked to reach the new, bigger audience. When he finally got his hands on the paper, four months ago, it was clear that more readers would not equal more revenue, and he declared the subscription fees will stay.

Not all industry-watchers are convinced that ditching less profitable readers works in the long run if it means more people fall out of the habit of reading a paper, just as other cost-cutting measures could also prove short-sighted. The New York Times is on the verge of making its first newsroom redundancies; its sister paper The Boston Globe is typical among smaller papers cutting back on overseas reporters. In the past two years, both the Times and the Journal have shaved inches off the size of the paper to reduce newsprint costs.

"The cuts made at so many papers, in the news staff and in the space dedicated to news, may not be good for the business over time," says the Poynter Institute's Mr Edmonds. "This perception about whether the industry is 'hot or not' extends to media buyers, and they are under pressure to move advertising budgets from old media to new media."

Optimists point out that former newspaper readers are not straying very far. In many cases, they are simply browsing the paper on the web for free. That is painful as far as circulation revenues goes, but it also presents an opportunity. "Advertising rates on the internet are, for the most part, up, and newspaper websites are usually the number one or number two most trafficked sites in their region, which bodes well for the economic upturn," says the fund management firm analyst. "It's just that it is harder to identify in a cyclical downturn when it is difficult for your real estate and employment advertising to be up."

Of course, there is the economic downturn to navigate first, and it is already looking brutal for some in the newspaper industry. Sam Zell, the property magnate who took over Tribune Group, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times last year, has found himself in danger of defaulting on his massive debts unless he sells some smaller papers, and he has told staff to brace for cuts. Circulation and advertising revenues are falling faster than he and his backers budgeted for little more than a year ago. Credit rating agencies downgraded the creditworthiness of several other newspaper companies in the past few weeks, and warned that they will likely downgrade still more.

It will take time to see who is right, the armageddonists or the newspaper executives who are claiming "managed reduction". Paul Ginocchio, analyst at Deutsche Bank, says it will take another year of adjustment before the ABC figures show the "true" rate of readership decline, but he urged investors to treat the sector with extreme caution. "We think the industry was expecting an improvement in trend and thus we view this result with some degree of alarm."

THREE'S COMPANY!!!

The three packages I selected for the fifth and final assignment of our Knight Center online journalism program are all human interest pieces, and at least two of them affected me so much, I could not have asked for better examples of the power of multimedia.

1: “Touching Hearts” in the Herald Sun, by Joe Weiss.
http://soundslides.com/archive/2000/hearts/

The “Touching Hearts” documentary mentioned by Jane Stevens in her tutorial is a favorite because it is a positive, profound and personal piece. I found it to be neat and effective. It’s well-edited and offers an outstanding combination of video, text and audio, to tell the inspirational stories of the visiting American medical team, treating Nicaragua’s impoverished kids with heart problems.

The first video feature of the doomed Oscar, sets the compelling tone for the rest of the excellent coverage. It is the most moving of the six individual profiles, and listening to/viewing Oscar’s weeping parents after he dies, is one of the toughest things I encountered in this course.

Having lived in neighboring Belize, specifically the tiny capital Belmopan, and seen first hand the same sort of problems mentioned by team members – numbing levels of poverty and the grim conditions under which people live - as well as the under-staffed and ill-equipped public hospital, made me relive my own memories and experiences.

I simply broke down at the end of the Oscar feature - which says a lot about the power of multimedia, specifically audio and video.

It made me recall sitting in the Belmopan facility, (very much like the one featured,) terrified and desperate, with my ailing son, who was semi-conscious and struggling with a drug-resistant staph infection, praying as well that he wouldn’t die and remembering the doctor admitting so softly, “it would be better if you just kept him at home, the hospital is no place for him…”

My son, Zubin, eventually recovered many weeks later, but the strength and kindness of ordinary Belizeans who, too often, had so little, but did so much, are indelible images, like those in Weiss’ story.

Even if my judgment may be clouded by my feelings, I found the multimedia format of the story perfect, comprehensive without being overly long, easy to navigate and well thought-out.






2.” Race in America” the New York Times
http://nytimes.com/library/national/race/magnolia/indexnav.htm

I can’t believe that this report was done in 2000! It must have been a pioneering piece of multimedia. Eight years on, it still sings, a sometimes haunting, poignant song that examines a controversial subject with much sensitivity and skill.

A lot of introductory text, but well written, some parts are way too long for today’s savvy online market and you have to move in between windows, so it gets clumsy at times.
I enjoyed it anyway for the sort of rich, dark, Deep South imagery and appeal, and so I looked at/listened to the entire story, (more than I can say for at least two other exhaustingly long multimedia stories I never completed) since I love history.

The “Two Tours of Magnolia” is a potent mix of audio, strong photos, interactive maps and graphics, woven around two strong contrasting women, their different stories, perspectives and lives.

Betty Hertzog, the last direct descendant of the Magnolia Plantation white owner cuts a rather frail figure amidst the lonely splendor of the Great House. While the burly historian/guide Carla Cowles offers opposing insights into the disturbing world of slavery, through her tour of the decaying shacks and structures hidden just aback the main quarters that are now part of the National Park Service. The cunning use of song spices up the mix, while complementary video, audio and even a discussion link for interactive feedback help to make this a memorable early media presentation.





3. “Liberians in Minnesota” at StarTribune.com
http://www.startribune.com/local/11608761.html



“Liberians in Minnesota” is the most disturbing and graphic multimedia presentation I ever looked at. This one will certainly keep me awake for weeks to come, and probably cause some terrible nightmares as well.

It is a brilliantly assembled, but heartbreaking story, with stark photo images, harrowing audio excerpts, and the vivid profiles and chilling accounts of the people who fled to Minnesota, to escape the terrible civil war in their homeland.

In the midst of all the horror, the child’s birthday party, the voices of hope, the lusty singing of the church choir, the haunted and empty eyes, I felt so physically sick at times listening to the survivors’ gripping accounts that I had to stop and return to the excerpts later.

A flawlessly composed production, “Liberians in Minnesota” is slick, fast and smart, and even offers the latest news updates, including the reprieve granted to people who were to be sent back.

Text stories are seamlessly inserted into the package, and everything works from just one easy to navigate window.

No wonder, journalism teacher and critic, Mindy McAdams raves about the interface, terming it “the most successfully integrated online journalism package” ever, and lauding it as “a model for everyone.”

I can easily see why. It is multimedia journalism at its finest, but humanity at its most inhumane.

Blogged down!

I have been "blogged down" this week scouring the Internet for the web logs I like to complete this assignment in week three of our Journalism 2.0 distance learning course. I started by scanning the A-list bloggers on the top 100 at Technorati.com, as our teacher, Mark Briggs suggested. I did find a few "flogs" (favourite blogs? sorry Mark, couldn't resist), but there are thousands out there and I am sure that as I read more of them, my selections will diversify. I have also set up a few news alerts but need to search around some more.

Since I have just started blogging, I chose the following two for their wealth of tips, advice, quality of writing, and links.

http://www.copyblogger.com/

http://www.problogger.net/

I could not find any new blogs from war correspondent Kevin Sites, but his gripping reports from the past remain my all-time favourite. Sites' compelling posts from the world's areas of conflict- were the first blogs I ever read, prior to this Knight Center programme.

His 'Hot Zone' reports for Yahoo, from the world's most conflict-torn areas haunted me, especially the moving stories of children like the abused Afghan bride, the beautiful and upbeat Gulsoma (http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs2986),

the cheerful Nepalese boy, Yubaraj, who at 13 becomes head of his impoverished family and parks bicycles for a living (http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs4389)

and the most chilling account of rape and war in the Congo, (http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs1152.)

Sites' last "Hot Zones" blog account (that I found) summarises his almost year-long coverage of 22 warn-torn areas in 19 countries and is at http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs9538 which I have chosen as my third favourite blog.


MY FIVE GREAT WEB HEADLINES:-

Getting Writing Done: How to Stop Thinking About It and Write

1. DO IT.

by Jane Northcote

http://www.copyblogger.com/getting-writing-done/

2. Strewth! Aussies reel at TV swearing

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/strewth-aussies-reel-at-tv-swearing-799042.html

3.New ladies' vodka gives doctors a headache
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080317/od_nm/russia_vodka1_dc;_ylt=As0C5ZFzBBor7yy1aaPiDp0SH9EA

4.Fleeing shoplifter forgets son

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/od_nm/dutch_dc;_ylt=AuJHmH6cZOkFMmPqVsiRHGys0NUE

5.No Horsing Around in the Hospital

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_No_Horsing_Around_in_the_Hospital_15461.html

The good headlines work because they are short, direct, and like the red-hued "Do it." grab your attention. Others are funny, full of innuendo and unusual for their subject, especially the items culled from the "Odd News" section, which made me first grin and then want to read the rest that follows.



FIVE POOR WEB HEADLINES

This is a beauty coming from the usually careful "Independent" newspaper, I enjoyed the mixed metaphor, young lion or a wet duck, loud roar or one quack of a headline?

1. England's young lion takes to Test scene like a duck to water

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/englands-young-lion-takes-to-test-scene-like-a-duck-to-water-798904.html

2.White House: Old Computers Were Destroyed: Admin. Tells Judge Seeking Missing E-Mail Data That Hard Drives Were Removed For Physical Destruction

http://greenpagan.newsvine.com/_news/2008/03/22/1383562-white-house-old-computers-were-destroyed-admin-tells-judge-seeking-missing-e-mail-data-that-hard-drives-were-removed-for-physical-destruction

Too wordy, repetitive and long. This headline should be headed for physical destruction.

3.Endangering, the environmentally endangered … From elephants to what next?

Friday February 29 2008

http://www.antiguasun.com/paper/?as=view&sun=142115129303232008&an=350658089502282008&ac=Columnist

I am unsure what this headline wants to say, and since I feel endangered by such wording, I am unwilling to see what comes next.

4.Developing airlift strategy for St. Croix is goal of newly formed panel

Friday, March 21st 2008

http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/index.pl/article_home?id=17622221

Not a bad headline really, just very boring, newspaper's website really needs a better strategy and shorter words if its' goal is to gain readers.

5.Science Etcetera Jupiterday, 20080320

http://www.technorati.com/posts/vBuNFq0W90D7%2FkWowN%2F7erY85Id7DlZ7LChMo7v3Kv4%3D

I felt like screaming MAYDAY! when I spotted this one while browsing technorati.com etc.


COMMENT ON STUDENTS' BLOG

I liked Claudine Housen's blog,http://claudinehousen.blogspot.com/
it is attractive, the white contrasts nicely with the black background, her posts are well-written and there are even photos! I sure am inspired to do more with mine!

Holi days

Very serene, sunny, Sunday morning in north-eastern Antigua, where I live, can hear the comforting chorus of birdsong, shiny crows, tiny bannaquits, bawdy sparrows, an occasional bejewelled hummingbird, and glimpse them flitting restlessly across my verandah. I feed them all, and since it's very hot, the birdbath dries out quickly leaving an ugly muddy sludge, the smelly residue of the piped water here.

The bougainvilleas are blooming in profusion, the cerise and royal purple bunches, all the more startling against the white picket fence running atop the cracking concrete wall. Swaying in the strong, trade winds that whip through the small valley, the neem trees whisper and whistle incessantly, as they discard another sudden shower of crackling gold leaves, carpeting the parched lawns.

Mount Pleasant rises nearby, a somnolent limestone curve, gleaming green and pale yellow in the tropical light; from which steep stone faces streaked dirty gray, peep out sullenly.

My fingers are stained magenta from the "abeer," or coloured liquid crystals that I mixed in water, for my eager children to celebrate Holi, or the ancient Hindu spring festival which was marked by us on Friday, the full moon day of the Phalgun month.

Dyed powders or "abrack," symbolic of the bright colours of the season, are also generously splashed on each other, and in our case, on the balding head of my most reluctant husband, and an overly-excited dog, who is still walking around with a rather pink coat!

A public holiday in some countries like Guyana, Holi coincided with Good Friday this year, so our observances were muted and mostly confined to the late afternoon.

Someone turned up outside our gate offering power-washing services and scuttled off in sheer panic, when my absent-minded spouse, his face an alarming mess of bloody red, riotous purple and sheer rose, hurried out to meet him. When rebuked, my husband regretfully announced, "I should have told him, my wife just 'buss' (burst) my head!"

Trouble

I have just launched this basic first blog to satisfy a requirement of the current digital Web 2.0 course I am participating in, sponsored by the Knight Center for Journalism. We are in week two and it has been pretty tough for me, since I have not kept up with the technology over the past years and too many of the concepts and applications are all new.

But it is also gratifying to learn something different almost every day even as there is so much to catch up with. I must confess though it can be pretty frustrating at times struggling with the fundamentals. As our course progresses and I learn more, I hope the blog becomes better.

I am having problems pasting the link to my Yahoo web-based RSS reader into this blog. I know I should use a screenshot of the page with the feeds and news searches, but don't know how to do it on Windows independent of Screengrab. I tried, but the quality was so poor, I could not discern any feeds. I tried cutting and pasting, but it had errors and didn't load.

Sorry Mark, I did not see your note until today and by then it was already late. I am going to keep trying and if I can figure it out with help before the 7 p.m deadline I will replace the initial assignment. I hate having to give up after I have spent so much time on it today. I have asked Vernon, Nazima and Carlos for help, and the latter two have responded so far, but I have not been able to copy and paste the link in a word document and upload it into the blog as they suggest.

Called up the IT guy who is employed at my husband's workplace but he had never used RSS and I guess that will be the trend across most of the Caribbean, except Trinidad.

I have used Yahoo as my RSS feeder since it is easier for me. I am freelance so I don't work in a conventional newsroom , but I am interested in what's happening newswise, especially in the region. Since I am Guyanese by birth, married to a Trinidadian, with two young Barbadian children and now living in Antigua-Barbuda, I am especially keen on regional news! I have found a Caribbean news website, Caribbean Herald.com and set up a feed.

I have traditionally read what's available on the BBC World News, so that's in, as well as the Independent.co.uk site which I find has a wide range of well-written news stories, features and analyses. I have chosen one of the two private newspapers in Guyana, the Stabroek news which helps me keep in touch with what's happening at home, while the other feed is sourced to EcoEarth.info Environment because that's topical and features three of my passions in its name.

Two of my neighbours are trying to outblast each other, with music so loud I can't hear myself speak, and my head is already pounding harder than the incessant bass. The din shattered the Sunday evening reverie suddenly and looks like it's going to last well into tomorrow. It has been a horribly long day and it's going to be an even longer night.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=tibetan+protests&ei=UTF-8

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=guyana+killings&ei=UTF-8

Five RSS News Feeds

http://www.ecoearth.info/

http://www.independent.co.uk/?service=Rss

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/default.stm

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=au&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Stabroek+News+Guyana

http://www.caribbeanherald.com/index.php/ct/10/id/e5abd99746ab67f4/