2005 Annual Report - Online Content Analysis

To what extent do news sites take advantage of the Web's capacity for depth and incorporating multiple media?

A year earlier we found that sites varied widely in this regard. Most of those studied contained links to background information but only some added multimedia.

This year, with input from online journalists, we wanted to look deeper. We decided to see the different types of links - video, audio, graphics and photos - and try to distinguish between those that were current, involving information less than a week old, and those that were more archival.

We also wanted to check for different levels of "interactivity." Could users communicate with those operating the site (via e-mail, votes, or chat boards)? And did users have the ability to manipulate or tailor the content in some way?

Looking first at background and current multimedia links:

• Video links do not seem to have grown much as a practice and still cannot be considered common. When sites did link to video, it was more likely to be current than historical. Fully 29% of all stories contained at least one link to current video while at least one link to more dated video pieces was found in just 5%.

• Photo essays and galleries were the next most popular link. Current shots were found as links in 19% of all stories. Links to older photos were found in 6%.

• Even though graphics and maps are especially applicable during an election year, those kinds of current links were connected to just 13% of all stories. Looking just at election stories, its use rose to about 20%.

• The bulk of the links dealt with current rather than archival information.

Multimedia Components, 2004
Percent of All Stories

Next we tried to assess the level of interactivity connected to stories. Could users communicate with the site? Could they manipulate the material?

In general, online news still has a long way to go in incorporating either capacity into its content. Just a quarter of stories offered some kind of communication with the site (for example, emailing your comments to the reporter). Almost the same percentage, 24%, allowed users to manipulate or tailor the data to their own needs in some fashion, such as checking crime data for their own neighborhoods.

The sites that stand out for the ability of users to communicate with staff members about the story at hand are Yahoo! and AOL. Every single Yahoo story studied offered users the opportunity to "Rate and/or recommend" the story. On AOL's news site, the vast majority of top news stories offer a similar exchange: "Chart or post a message."

CNN, however, went a step further, offering customization of 90% of the content studied, often by allowing people to set up email alerts about a particular story. MSNBC connected some kind of customization to 42% of stories; Fox trailed at 32%.

Interactivity of Online News

Origin	Total	AOL	ABC	CNN	Dall-as	Fox	Bloom.	MSNBC	WPost	Yahoo
Communi- cation	25%	85%	1%	14%	10%	3%	0	23%	12%	100%
Manipul- ation	24%	6%	1%	90%	21%	32%	0	42%	9%	13%

If the Internet culture is really moving toward the "pro-sumers," pro-active audiences who read and comment at the same time, or both consume and produce news, most news sites still have a long way to go.