Subscribe to Feed Subscribe by Email

Looking for a job? Check out the CMSWire Job Board.

Print vs. Web: The Evolution of Breaking News

Speaking of the economy. Have you heard the one about Bear Stearns? Of course you have.

But have your heard this story?

Publishing 2.0 provided an interesting commentary “Following A Breaking News Story On The Web”. As it turns out, when big news breaks on a Sunday, it becomes quite apparent how different the Web is from traditional print media.

With a developing story such as this one, printing news on Sunday night is obsolete the moment the ink dries. Is this just the way it goes? If it weren’t for the Web, no one would be the wiser. So has this become the role of web-based media — to pick up the slack? Perhaps, the solution to the newspaper wars is for the Web to supplement, at the very least, its print counterpart.

Publishing 2.0 maintains that this is one example for “news organizations to learn about how this story is covered and presented on the web — and how a news consumer can follow it and find interesting coverage”.

In addition to the actual content that is provided via online newspapers, it’s interesting to take inventory of the way that content is laid out. It’s very consistent with the front page of the print version. These online “front pages” are updated regularly and it’s hard to know what is new and what’s been bumped down the page.

In contrast, 2.0 suggests that instead, online news display its content in reverse chronological order. Noting that “news is not static — it’s constantly in motion,” a blog-type format is useful in displaying the evolution of the day’s news. In addition, the presence of breaking news on community-based news sites, like Digg, is scarce. The Bear Stearns story was hardly present on these sites because supposedly, “business and the economy don’t really interest most Digg users”.

Yet again, the struggle between print and web-based media leaves readers with an incomplete view of the day’s news. While layout, design and information architecture all play a role in how the news is conveyed, ultimately the user suffers from traditional news sites’ conflict between serving print readers and serving web readers.

Until they are able to work out their issues, there is always CNN and Google News to provide up-to-the-minute, blow by blow of breaking news.

Comments