Online Content, A Day in the Life - Annual Report 2006

Yahoo News takes the spirit of Google News — the user is the editor — a step further. It separates the news in multiple ways and allows users to pick the way they see it — by source, by topic, by genre (photos, opinion), by most popular stories, most viewed and even something called “weird news.”

Users also have the capacity, within distinct limits, to add or remove categories and change the layout.

But Yahoo isn’t culling from 4,500 news sources as Google is. It is focusing more heavily on the judgment of six sources — AP, Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor. Users also can select their own sources from a list of 14.

If Google News is about mining the Web for maximum depth, in other words, Yahoo News is more about navigating it within clearer limits for maximum choice.

(The page has been redesigned since May 11, 2005 , but the effect is similar. Users sort through the different sources using tabs, so that more classifications are easier to view. There are a few more top stories offered at the beginning of the page, and some new sources are offered, such as NPR. Heading into 2006 users were also now offered some minimal original content from Yahoo journalists, under the heading “YAHOO EXCLUSIVE,” though the quantity of original content was more symbolic than substantial.)

On May 11, the top of the page at 9 a.m. was a story about the bombing in Iraq , from AP, that featured a big headline, a photo of a badly damaged car and a one-paragraph lead-in with the dateline. It was the only story on the page played with such prominence. Then came mainly a listing of headlines: There was a “Top Stories” heading, an inventory of the six sources from which the site got its news, and five headlines from each of them. On this day, several of the stories were the same as elsewhere, but not all: The slayings in Illinois were a top story in four of the six outlets at 9 a.m. and the Iraq story was a top item on all the wire services at 1 p.m. The Christian Science Monitor, with its orientation toward news features rather than breaking headlines, also offered a different news agenda (“Pivotal days for Frist and the GOP,” “L.A. mayor’s race signals new ethnic alliances.”)

The page’s main listing of headlines was followed by a link to the New York Times homepage (no longer offered in the same place). Then came categories that traditional journalists sometimes find tantalizing, challenging and even a little horrifying: users can click on the stories that are “most popular” followed by “most viewed” and “most recommended.” It’s not entirely clear what the differences are. But at 9 a.m. on May 11, the “most popular” stories bore little relationship to the top stories as defined by any of the news organizations listed. The most popular story was “New World islands emerge from Dubai ’s waters.” The second was, “Mark Hamill Reminisces on ‘Star Wars.’ ” The “Most viewed” was closer to the AP news agenda. But the most recommended stories were the most intriguing of all: “Puget Sound in declining health,” and “Realtors fight cost-cutters with rule to keep fees high,” and “Experts: flares may have helped planets.”

By the numbers, Yahoo was fairly typical when it came to updating. Just under half of its top stories (45%) were replaced during the day. Another third were updated in some fashion. As with Google, though, the updating is not a decision made by the staff; in this case it is the latest postings from each of the key news outlets — or on this day from three of them (AP, Reuters and AFP). The difference from Google is in what the two sites draw from and how they offer it to users. Yahoo pulls from a small pool of outlets and lists the stories by the outlet. Google pulls from a nearly limitless number of outlets and lists them by topic.

When it came to exploiting the interactive and multimedia dimensions of the Web, Yahoo again was about average among the sites we found over all. Just over half its stories contained links to video of the events described (55% versus 45% on average) and the video links hit most of the big stories of the day — the Iraq bombings, the Zion slayings, North Korea ’s fuel rods. Two thirds (65%) offered photo galleries. A quarter of the stories had links by which users could customize or manipulate data (slightly higher than the 18% average). And three quarters of its stories offered users the chance to communicate or interact with someone to follow up (nearly double the 39% average) in a variety of ways, from e-mailing the piece to visiting message boards so as to post views. Here, Yahoo scored much higher than its online rival Google, and higher than the New York Times, and about on a par with sites that have their origins in television, like CBS and CNN.

Only in the use of audio did Yahoo lag. None of its top stories, at least back in May, had audio links (compared with 18% overall).