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THE FACE OF MEDIA CONVERGENCE:
A COMPARISON OF ONLINE AND PRINT VERSIONS OF 'USA TODAY'
John Weispfenning (Ph.D., Purdue University) is
an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Journalism and Mass Communication at the
University of Maine, 5743 Lord Hall, Orono,
ME 04469-5743 / (207) 581-1281 /
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Submitted to:
New spaper Division
199 4 AEJMC Annual Convention
3/9 4
THE F ACE OF MEDIA
CONVERGENCE:
A C OMPARISON OF ONLINE AND PRINT VERSIONS OF 'USA TODAY'
Although much has been written about the increased
communication possibilities that may be brought about by media
convergence, relatively little has been done yet to measure
the actual performance of those media that represent the first
efforts to bridge the distinctions that separate categories of
the mass media. Convergence, as used here, refers to the
"integration or interface between and among media systems or
organizations," including technological integration (Dennis &
Pavlik, 1993, p. 2). Of special interest, because it is among
the industries that are quickly developing content for the
poorly-named "information superhighway," is the newspaper
industry.
While newspapers have revised the mechanical technology
that is used in production, the distribution of newspapers has
not changed markedly in the last century. In an age of
electronic communication and with growing awareness of the
limits on renewable natural resources and waste disposal,
these means of mechanical production and physical distribution
are in need of updating (Fidler, 1991). Indeed, if they are
to survive, newspaper companies will have to undergo "a
creative transformation into a new electronic medium" (Fidler,
1991, p. 116).
Newspapers have been fast to adopt the use of computers
in the "front-end" for word processing, pagination, and
billing, but have been slow to use them later in the
production and distribution processes (Dennis, 1991; Ungaro,
1991). The effort to better utilize electronic communication
for production and distribution has resulted in the combining
of newspaper companies' resources with technologies similar to
those used by videotext, which was introduced decades ago.
While some discrepancies exist in the use of the terms
"videotex," "teletext," and "videotext," Rogers' (1986)
encompassing definition of videotext is most useful in
describing the myriad systems and applications in use in 1994:
"an interactive information service that allows individuals to
request frames of information from a central computer via
telephone or cable, for viewing on a video display screen" (p.
44).
Key to this definition is the notion of interactivity,
which can be as simple as the ability to choose which
categories of information will be received, or as complex as
the ability to instantly receive additional information on a
related topic by entering a command. It is this interactivity
that marks online distribution of news content as a new
technology, and not simply the joining together of two old
technologies (Koch, 1991).
Because the number of newspaper companies getting
involved in online distribution is in flux, estimates of
industry participation are difficult to obtain and are quickly
dated. Among those publications that do utilize, or are
exploring, online distribution are some of the largest
newspapers in the United States, including the Detroit Free
Press, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the
New York Times (Heilbrunn, 1994; Potter, 1994). Smaller
newspapers that are available online include the San Jose
Mercury News, the Albuquerque Tribune, and the St. Louis Daily
Record (Resnick, 1994). These publications are available to
consumers who have a personal computer and a modem. By
accessing an online service, such as Prodigy, Compuserve, or
America Online, subscribers may receive online newspapers. In
early 1993, an estimated 3.2 million households, of the more
than 94 million U.S. households, had subscribed to one of
these three online services (Eng & Lewyn, 1994). In addition,
those individuals with access to the Internet, a network of
institutional mainframe computers, can have online
publications such as USA Today Decisionline delivered to their
electronic mailboxes.
As more publications enter the world of online
distribution, questions remain about the differences and
similarities that might exist between the electronic and paper
versions. USA Today Decisionline presents one significant
example of a media company's efforts to enter into electronic
distribution of an existing newspaper. In this study, a
content analysis will compare the online USA Today
Decisionline with the printed USA Today to answer the question
of how online publications might differ from printed
newspapers.
Gannett's USA Today
In 1979, the head of the Gannett Co., Alan Neuharth, saw
the future. During a trip to Europe, Neuharth became aware
that the International Herald Tribune was using digital
technology to service a network of far-flung printing plants
(Prichard, 1987). Neuharth began to explore the possibility
of using digital and satellite technology, along with the many
resources of the Gannett operations, to publish a daily
national newspaper in the United States.
The result was the September 15, 1982, debut of USA Today
in Washington, DC. The first edition sold out, and as USA
Today developed regional distribution that would eventually
blanket the United States, it drew upon the considerable
wealth of the Gannett Co.
The sixth largest media company in the United States,
Gannett had $3.3 billion in revenue in 1992. Of that, almost
$2.7 billion came from newspaper publishing, with $370 million
in broadcasting revenues (100 leading, 1994). Gannett
publishes more than 80 daily newspapers, including USA Today,
and more than 50 non-daily newspapers (Phillips, 1993; West,
1991). In addition, the company owns 10 television stations,
15 radio stations, and the largest outdoor advertising company
in North America (Phillips, 1993).
In 1992, USA Today had a daily average circulation of
approximately 1.6 million, which made it the second largest
newspaper in the United States, after the Wall Street Journal
(Top 100, 1992). Notably, USA Today remains one of a handful
of newspapers that have built a national circulation (Dennis &
Pavlik, 1993), and one of even fewer that have done so by
featuring general interest, mass audience journalism.
Online Newspapers, Past and Future
Bogart (1992) points out several reasons why newspapers
need to move beyond mechanical distribution, including
increased penetration and weight of Sunday editions and the
increasing use of separate sections targeted to readers with
specialized interests. With readers routinely complaining of
no time to read and ever-higher newsprint prices, newspapers
may begin to "unbundle," offering individuals only the
sections of the paper they choose in advance (Blankenburg,
1992). This philosophy of unbundling lends itself naturally
to online distribution, which has already a tradition of
allowing subscribers to select the information they receive.
Within the newspaper organization, the growth of
electronic communication has occurred in two stages (Koch,
1991). Beginning in the early 1980s, online distribution of
information data bases, including newspaper "clipping"
services, made it possible for reporters to access information
without leaving their offices. The second, more recent, stage
is the online distribution of the newspaper, which may contain
important ramifications for individual journalists and their
readers. Due to the emphasis placed on the importance of
speed in the various forms of electronic journalism, which
includes online newspapers, there is little time for verifying
information or supplying context (Koch, 1991). Additionally,
Weaver's (1983) study of British videotex journalists found
that they were allowed little, if any, time for actual
reporting: their primary job responsibilities were to
repackage existing news reports. This repackaged news has
been dubbed "shovelware" by Thalhimer (1994).
It should be noted that the United States did enjoy a
number of videotext systems in the early years of cable
television. These systems ranged in complexity from highly
simplified, text-only, news "crawls" to menu systems from
which consumers could choose various pages of information.
Zerbinos (1990) concluded that people were more likely to seek
out "personally relevant, utilitarian information" from
videotext than they were to seek out general mass audience
news (p. 928). As a result, most media companies seeking to
reach a mass audience pulled out of the videotext business in
the mid 1980s, while specialized information-retrieval text
services, like Dow Jones News/Retrieval, stayed online
(Zerbinos, 1990).
Drawing upon Weaver's (1983) research on videotext, it is
possible to outline potential benefits and costs of online
news services. Benefits include immediate accessibility and
updating; the size of the "newshole" will not be dictated by
advertising volume; and there is no need to recycle newsprint.
Potential hindrances to adoption may be that the online
services, like the early videotext systems, represent a
technological "push" from producers, rather than demand from
consumers; unbundled services may lead to increased isolation
among news consumers; unbundled services depend on consumers
knowing what they want; and, historically, these systems have
not handled lengthy or complex sets of information. In
addition, Rogers (1986) discusses possible reasons for a lack
of consumer excitement about videotext: technology demanded
that users be in one location; consumers can access just one
frame at a time, which removes the context provided by a
newspaper's design; and consumer expectations that the
television screen is meant for entertainment and not for
serious information.
Weaver (1983) concludes that videotext lacked much of the
content of newspapers, including photographs, advertisements,
indepth stories, and variety of news. He also concludes that
videotext was concerned with "simple journalism" (p. 87), its
content was more similar to radio news bulletins than to
newspapers, and the presentation tended to blur the
distinctions between news and other kinds of information. At
the same time, he notes that the story lengths commonly found
in videotext serve both the publisher and the reader. For the
publisher, short stories are easier to write, control, and
edit. For the reader, they remove the need to scan several
screens of the same story.
Research Hypotheses
Based on the previous research into videotext and online
distribution of information, the following hypotheses provide
the structure for this study:
H1: USA Today Decisionline's stories will be presented
in a simple format of one screen or less;
H2: USA Today Decisionline will present little, if any,
reporting not found in the USA Today newspaper;
H3: USA Today Decisionline will lack much of the content
traditionally found in the USA Today newspaper;
H4: USA Today Decisionline's newshole size will be
relatively constant;
H5: USA Today Decisionline will present less variety of
news than the USA Today newspaper; and
H6: USA Today Decisionline's stories will be shorter
than stories found in the USA Today newspaper.
Met hod
This study relies on both textual
analysis and content
analysis to compare the USA Today Decisionline and the USA
Today newspaper published on the same day. A content analysis
was performed on five consecutive issues of USA Today
Decisionline to establish that the issue chosen for comparison
with the printed version would be representative.
Due to the comprehensive nature of the comparison, the
coding involved dual units of analysis, both story and
sentence counts. The number of stories was chosen as a
measure of the variety of news items available to readers on a
given day. For the USA Today Decisionline, "story" was
defined following the structure of the publication: a single
paragraph of news with its own brief, descriptive headline and
separated by blank lines from other paragraphs. One notable
exception to this structure is the presence of "run-on"
stories. While each story is designed to stand alone with
repeated first-reference usage of names, titles, and other
information, occasionally two or more stories on the same news
item were sequenced together. Each paragraph of the "run-on"
stories was coded as an individual story.
For the USA Today newspaper, "story" was defined as
continuous editorial content with a single theme, any number
of paragraphs in length, organized under a headline. Excluded
from this definition were "teases" or indexes used to guide
readers to other stories, photographs, drawings, and their
captions. As noted by King (1990), many newspaper paragraphs
are only one sentence long, therefore the sentence, as a unit
of analysis, yields "a more accurate comparison of content
than would have been obtained by using paragraphs" (p. 85).
"Sentence" was defined as a discrete unit of meaning,
beginning with a capitalized word and ending with a period or
question mark.
In addition to coding the number of stories and
sentences, coders also noted when stories in the USA Today
Decisionline had been repeated. For the comparison with the
printed newspaper, these repeated stories were dropped from
the analysis.
Four of the 20 separate sections that comprise the USA
Today Decisionline were not included in the content analysis,
due to their lack of defined "stories." The following four
sections were excluded from this analysis: Issues & Debate
(one editorial, one opinion column, and several reader
comments on a common topic), Radio Sports Report (primarily
sports scores), Snapshots (textual portrayal of the
information graphics that run in the lower left hand corner of
page one on each printed section), and Weather (a listing of
regional forecasts, world temperatures, and domestic
temperature forecasts). See Table 1 for a complete listing of
the Decisionline sections. To balance these exclusions,
analysis of the USA Today newspaper excluded the pages
containing the editorials, opinion columns, and letters to the
editor; the weather page; stock market listings; sports box
scores; and television program listings.
___________________________
Insert Table 1 about here
___________________________
Among the two coders, intercoder
reliability was high
(Scott's pi=.905). Following the coding of the data, three
statistical tests were performed. Two Chi square analyses
were done to compare the five issues of the USA Today
Decisionline to establish the absence of anomalies that might
otherwise skew the comparison to the USA Today newspaper. The
first Chi square analyzed the total number of sentences and
the non-repeated number of sentences in each day's USA Today
Decisionline. The second Chi square analyzed the total number
of stories and the non-repeated number of stories in each
day's USA Today Decisionline. The third statistical analysis
was an independent T-ratio for samples of unequal sizes
(Sprinthall, 1987), which was used to compare the story
lengths, measured in number of sentences, of the USA Today
Decisionline with the USA Today newspaper.
The five USA Today Decisionline issues compared were from
the week of February 28-March 4, 1994. From these five
issues, the issue of March 3, 1994, was randomly selected for
comparison with the USA Today newspaper published on the same
date.
Findings
Structure and Format
USA Today Decisionline is delivered early each weekday
morning to subscribers' electronic mailboxes; each section is
a separate mail file, focussed on a single general subject.
The cost of receiving the entire publication, 20 sections, is
$85 for one year. It is also available unbundled, at a cost
of $12 per section for one year.
The sections are handled like any other electronic mail
received by the subscriber. After opening the file, the
subscriber can page up or page down through the file. Each
section contains from 12 to 17 stories. Typical stories have
four to six lines of text, which means two full and one or two
partial stories are shown on screen at one time. Each section
fills from five to seven screens. At the end of each section
is the name and phone number of the section editor, two
copyright warnings against redistribution, and an e-mail
address for the distributor, American Cybercasting
Corporation.
The use of run-on stories allows USA Today Decisionline
to convey expanded information on a single topic while
maintaining the visual format. The most visible placement of
the run-on stories is in the Bonus section, which each day
follows a single theme through its stories. For example, the
March 3 Bonus section's 13 stories and 58 sentences explored
aspects of the changing relative economic status of the United
States and Japan. More common usage of the run-on structure
is found in the March 3 Advertising section, where two stories
were placed together on television ratings for the Olympics.
The first story explained that the Lillehammer competition was
the most-watched event in television history, while the second
story detailed CBS's low expectations for converting viewers
to its regular programming. In total, in the March 3
Decisionline, 53 stories explored 18 general topics in run-
ons.
While the use of the run-on story construction does allow
the transmission of some degree of in-depth information,
evidence supports Hypothesis 1, that stories will be presented
in a simple format of less than one screen.
Because the USA Today Decisionline is available in
whatever unbundled configuration a subscriber chooses, the
online publication contains some repetition from section to
section. In the March 3 Decisionline, 48 stories were
repeated in other sections after their first appearance. The
most repetition occurred in the Personal Investing (8
repeats), News (8 repeats), Business Law (7 repeats), and
Trends & Marketing (7 repeats) sections. No repetition
occurred in the Real Estate and Sports sections. For the
entire week's sample, the percentage of repeated stories
ranged from 16.04 on February 28 to 23.72 on March 1.
Original Content
The USA Today Decisionline is by no means an exact
representation of the information contained in the same day's
USA Today newspaper. While a majority of the information is
drawn from that day's newspaper, some information originates
from other sources. An example of information drawn from the
same-day newspaper is the March 3 Bonus section coverage of
the United States and Japanese economic competition which ran
as the newspaper's Business section cover story. An example
of information not contained in the same day's newspaper was a
story in the Decisionline Health section on a Florida state
senate committee vote. Of the 184 non-repeated stories
contained in the March 3 Decisionline, 141 or 76.6% were also
found in the March 3 USA Today newspaper. This fails to
support Hypothesis 2, that USA Today Decisionline would
present little, if any, content not found in the USA Today
newspaper.
Traditional Content and Style
Another difference between the online and printed
publications is Decisionline's lack of the graphics,
photographs, and charts that have made the USA Today newspaper
recognizable. Similarly, the Decisionline lacks any
advertising, either display or classified. In the March 3 USA
Today newspaper, there were 9 full pages of advertising and 25
other pages with some advertising (out of 44 total pages).
This strongly supports Hypothesis 3, that the USA Today
Decisionline would lack much of the content traditionally
found in the USA Today newspaper.
While a detailed analysis of the writing style of these
publications is beyond the scope of this study, a few
important observations can be made. The USA Today
Decisionline is written in a style that is very similar to
broadcast style, with less attribution and sourcing than is
generally found in print journalism. There are no bylines,
the point of view is objective, and there are very few
quotations of sources. When a source does provide
information, it is written in third person as a paraphrase.
In contrast, the USA Today newspaper uses a more personalized
version of standard print journalism style.
Newshole Size
Analysis of the news content in the USA Today
Decisionline found that the amount of news each day did not
vary significantly. The first Chi square analysis of five
issues of the USA Today Decisionline for the week of February
28-March 4 found no significant difference in the number of
total and non-repeated sentences in each issue (X2(4, N=6,769) = 1.77, p
= n.s.), and the second Chi square analysis found no significant difference in
the number of total and non-
repeated stories in each issue (X2(4,N=1,975) = .57, p = n.s.). This
established that the March 3
Decisionline issue, which was compared to the same day's USA Today newspaper,
did not differ significantly
from that week's other Decisionlines. It also supported Hypothesis 4, that
the Decisionline newshole would
be relatively constant.
___________________________
Insert Table 2 about here
___________________________
Variety of News
The March 3 Decisionline featured 232 total stories, 184 of which were
non-repeated stories,
compared to 307 stories carried in the USA Today newspaper. Of interest is
the relative weight given to
business news by the Decisionline. Although there is no single "business"
section in Decisionline, no
fewer than 8 of the 20 Decisionline sections target segments of the business
community: Advertising,
Banking & Economy, Energy, Insurance, Business Law, Real Estate, Technology,
and Telecommunications. In
the March 3 Decisionline, these 8 sections carried 102, or 55.4 %, of the
non-repeated stories. The
printed USA Today's Money section on the same date carried 17 stories, or 5.5
%, of the total stories.
This seems to lend support for Hypothesis 5, that Decisionline would present
less variety of news than the
USA Today newspaper.
Length of Stories
Statistical comparison of the March 3 issues of Decisionline and the USA
Today newspaper did find
a significant difference in the length of stories. An independent T-ratio for
samples of unequal size
found that the USA Today newspaper's mean story length (M = 9.43 sentences)
was significantly greater than
the USA Today Decisionline's mean story length (M = 3.40 sentences), t(489) =
8.199,
p<.001. This supported Hypothesis 6, that stories in the Decisionline would
be shorter than stories in the
USA Today newspaper.
___________________________
Insert Table 3 about here
___________________________
Among the sections of the USA Today
newspaper, News featured the shortest stories (M = 7.10
sentences, N = 105 articles), followed by Sports (M = 9.46 sentences, N = 139
articles), Life (M = 10.43
sentences, N = 46 articles), and Money (M = 20.88 sentences, N = 17 articles).
Eighteen stories in the
March 3 USA Today were only one sentence long. The longest story was 72
sentences. There was far less
variance in story length and in the number of stories in each Decisionline
section. All 16 sections
analyzed had mean story lengths ranging from 2.67 sentences (Energy) to 4.91
sentences (Technology), and
contained from 12 stories (Health) to 17 stories (Banking & Economy and
Personal Investing). Two stories
were only one sentence long, and one story was seven sentences long.
Discussion
This research explored differences between online
publications and their printed counterparts
through a same-day comparison of the USA Today Decisionline and the USA Today
newspaper. As expected,
major differences were found between the two publications. First, the USA
Today Decisionline employs a
simple format. This format keeps individual stories to less than one screen
in length, which results in a
visually monotonous appearance. Stories are all similar lengths, and one
screen of text resembles the
screens that came before and those that will come after. Without the emphasis
provided by differently-
sized headlines, story length, and placement, all stories may be assigned
roughly the same importance by
readers.
Second, the USA Today Decisionline was found to lack much of the content
traditionally associated
with the USA Today newspaper. Specifically, the photographs, charts, and
other graphics that have made the
newspaper so recognizable were completely lacking from the Decisionline. It
is likely that as computer
technology continues to develop, these elements will find a place in the
online publication. Until that
time, however, there is no visual connection between the Decisionline and the
USA Today newspaper.
A third important difference is the absence of advertising in the USA Today
Decisionline, which
reduces fluctuations in newshole size based upon the quantity of advertising.
While it is likely that
advertisers will more frequently utilize online publications in the future,
online publications do not face
the same raw material costs as do printed publications, and therefore the
quantity of news would be
expected to remain unrelated to the quantity of advertising.
Fourth, the variety of news presented in the USA Today Decisionline was
less broad than that
presented in the USA Today newspaper. There was no summary of state news in
the Decisionline, and the
weight placed upon business news in the Decisionline appears to come at the
expense of general news
content, at least in comparison to the USA Today newspaper. While targeting
Decisionline to those most
likely to take advantage of an online news publication is a wise marketing
decision, in connection with
unbundled delivery it may be viewed by some, perhaps wrongly, as contributing
to informational
isolationism. However, a more probable occurrence is that general news
content will increase as a less
specialized audience gains access to online publications.
Fifth, the stories in USA Today Decisionline were significantly shorter
than stories in the USA
Today newspaper. Yet, through the use of run-on sequencing, placing stories
on a single theme next to each
other, Decisionline is able to present information of some depth. While these
stories lack the continuity
provided by a single, longer article, they may present a viable way for online
publications to handle
complex topics in a visually simple format. At the same time, USA Today
Decisionline remains a daily news
summary that follows the conventions of broadcast news briefs, and cannot be
considered to provide indepth
information.
One notable finding that went against expectations was the large amount of
USA Today Decisionline
content that was not found in the same day's USA Today newspaper. While this
information most probably
does not represent original reporting by the Decisionline writers and editors,
it does serve as notice that
the Decisionline is a different publication from the USA Today newspaper.
Readers of each publication will
have access to information not available to readers of the other publication.
The USA Today Decisionline, while drawing upon a sophisticated network of
computers, is itself
technologically unsophisticated. It presents the subscriber with only a small
amount of interactivity in
choosing sections and the pace at which it is read; this is only slightly more
interactivity than that
enjoyed by readers of the printed newspaper. However, it is likely that as
computer technology develops,
greater interactivity will be made available to subscribers.
Perhaps the most important of these differences is the actual appearance of
the online
publication. The lack of capability to emphasize or deemphasize a story
through traditional methods
severely restricts the transmission of journalistic judgment to the reader.
Quite simply, the lack of
variation in USA Today Decisionline's story lengths, size of headlines, and
physical placement relative to
other stories, means that the news is presented without the surrounding
context found in printed
publications. Thus, a story about racial discrimination in cancer treatments
follows a story about tea
consumption: both have the same appearance, and the tea story is given
slightly more space. At the least,
this may lead to further erosion of the somewhat arbitrary boundaries that
divide hard and soft news; at
its worst, it may represent the partial abdication of a traditional
journalistic function.
While future technological developments may allow greater editorial control
over such elements as
headline size and story arrangement, this issue of context deserves further
consideration. How people
access and understand news, and the concept of news itself, is undergoing
profound change that is not yet
understood fully. The impact of these changes for journalism and for society
present a rich field for mass
communication researchers to explore in future studies.
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Table 1
USA Today Decisionline Sections
______________________________________________________________
Advertising
Banking & Economy
Bonus (Topic varied each day)
Energy
Health
Insurance
International News
Personal Investing
Issues & Debate*
Business Law
News
Real Estate
Radio Sports*
Snapshots*
Sports
Technology
Telecommunications
Travel
Trends & Marketing
Weather*
______________________________________________________________
*Not included in the analysis
Table 2
USA Today Decisionline newshole size
______________________________________________________________
Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri
2/28 3/1 3/2 3/3 3/4-6
______________________________________________________________
Total Stories 212 215 228 232 218
Total Sentences 715 748 793 794 742
Mean Story Length,
in sentences 3.37 3.48 3.48 3.42 3.40
SD .99 1.01 1.00 .91 1.02
Non-repeated Stories 178 164 176 184 168
Non-repeated Sentences 597 568 613 626 573
Mean Story Length,
in sentences 3.35 3.46 3.48 3.40 3.41
SD 1.00 1.06 1.06 .92 1.05
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Table 3
Comparison of USA Today Decisionline with printed USA Today, March 3, 1994
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Decisionline Newspaper
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Total Stories 232 307
Non-repeated Stories 184 307
Total Sentences 794 2,895
Sentences in Shortest Story 1 1
Sentences in Longest Story 7 72
Non-repeated Sentences 626 2,895
Mean Length of Non-repeated Stories* 3.40 9.43
Standard Deviation for Length of
Non-repeated Stories* .92 12.08
Percentage of Repeated Stories 20.69 0.00
Percentage of Repeated Sentences 21.16 0.00
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*Reported in number of sentences
THE FACE OF MEDIA CONVERGENCE:
A COMPARISON OF ONLINE AND PRINT VERSIONS OF 'USA TODAY'
John Weispfenning is an Assistant Professor in
the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the
University of Maine, 5743 Lord Hall, Orono, ME 04469-5743 / (207) 581-1281 /
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Abstract
This research explores differences between online
and printed newspapers through a same-day
comparison of the online USA Today Decisionline and the printed USA Today
newspaper. Content analysis
suggests that the online publication had a relatively constant amount of news,
featured shorter stories
with little variation in length, and emphasized business news. Additionally,
the USA Today Decisionline
format did not provide stories with the context traditionally found through
printed newspapers' physical
layout.
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