Although newspapers in electronic format first appeared in 1970s, online delivery of news emerged in the 1990s (Greer & Mensing, 2006). In these early versions, the content was text-based, and was delivered from online services such as America Online (Li, 2006). In 1994, less than 10 newspapers were available to the public through the World Wide Web. However, online newspapers demonstrated rapid growth by the end of 1990s and by mid 2001, more than 3,400 newspapers were online (Li, 2006).
The reason for this accelerated emergence of online newspapers was not only the potential offered by Internet. The profit of the newspaper industry was in decline since the end of 1980s, and the publishers were looking for new ways for their business (Bockowski, 2004). Ironically, online versions did not bring the quick profit publishers were looking for. Rather, the revenues showed a stable, but slow increase (Greer & Mensing, 2006). Nevertheless, the negative impact on the circulation of print newspapers has also been less than expected (Cao & Li, 2006). During the first decade of online newspapers, they were seen mostly as complimentary to the print medium, often as an advertisement introducing the print newspaper as the main merchandise (Krumsvik, 2006). Gradually, as more and more newspapers appeared online, publishers felt pressured to have a web presence among their rivals (Cao & Li, 2006; Krumsvik, 2006). Today it is hard to find a newspaper in North America that does not have an online version. Additionally, an increasing number of newspapers are created online and have no print version available. Furthermore, a small number of newspapers have shifted from having both print and online versions to online-only (Li, 2006).
As a result, the status of online newspapers is much advanced than their early days. Online versions offer faster access and more updates compared to their print counterparts (Li, 2006). They make use of various technologies such as audio, animation, graphics and video, and increasingly offer interactive elements. For example, several newspapers covered the Eurocup in June 2008 with a minute-by-minute account of the games, enriched by photographs, animation, audio and videos and offered the readers the chance to add their comments during and after the games.
The Position of E-newspapers today
Redefining the design
The history of e-newspapers has not only been short, but has been influenced by accelerated technological development. As a result, today’s e-newspapers make use of many modern technologies which give them an advantage over the print medium. Nevertheless, their design mimics print medium (Lowrey, 1999; Bockowski, 2004; Krumsvik, 2006). However, the elements behind the traditional design of print newspapers do not always make sense in the virtual world.
Lowrey (1999) summarizes the main factors of print design as headline size, dominant imagery, story placement and story length. Using these elements, the designer tells the reader how to read the paper, as these factors give clues to the reader about the importance of the news, as well as where to start and where to end reading (Lowrey, 1999). Online newspapers have been following this linear style, although it is being replaced gradually by a more interactive style, where not only the editor and the designer, but also the reader defines the relevance, importance and even the length of the news (Lowrey, 1999). One example of this shift of control to the reader is the case of hyperstories, where the length, the borders and the focus of the news story is determined by the reader through hyperlinks. Lowrey (1999) summarizes this tendency of control shift from editors to readers as the changing role of newspaper editors from a “gatekeeper” to “pathfinder”, where the design suggests how the news could be read, rather than how it should be read.
For the publishers, there are two advantages to this approach. First, the audience of online newspapers is spread over a larger spectrum compared to the print medium, as geographic limitations do not apply in the Internet (Salaverria, 2005). That makes it more difficult for the editors and designers to decide what kind of presentation would be the best for all. Second, research shows that most traffic to the e-newspaper’s web site comes from searches rather than by the “front door” (Annual report on American Journalism, 2008). This means that for readers who are visiting the e-newspaper via links, the suggestions made by the design of the main page have less significance.
Although at a first glance this tendency of design appears to give a lot of power to the reader, the reality might be different. Even if more control might be desirable for the reader, some kind of guidance in a crowded web page might be equally necessary (Li, 2006). One way to achieve this balance between freedom and guidance is to focus on the user-friendliness of the design: it should be as simple, clear and easy to use as possible, with simple language and easy to understand icons or graphics for labelling (U.S., 2006).
While flashy elements might be an advantage to attract users to the page, they might slow the downloading time and create difficulty in the reading experience (U.S., 2006). Since reading the news is about getting useful information on time, the ability to reach the news quickly might be considered more important than the presentation. Photos and illustrations are entry points to stories both in print and online newspapers (Lowrey, 1999). In the case of online newspapers, the technology provides various multimedia elements such as video, animation, photos, maps as well as audio. This abundance of choices sometimes results in redundancy of content (Lowrey, 1999).
