News Diary

Jake Alverson
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

Over the past few days I have been more conscious of how I use online news. Without changing my regular reading habits, I made a “news diary” to hopefully learn more about how online news is consumed today.

With today’s constant news cycle a newsroom must release content when the story first happens or at the very least, when it’s developing. For that reason, a lot of news stories are brought to the reader’s attention as they are happening.
Personally, I receive a notification for any “breaking story” from the New York Times. This is a change from how news worked in the print-era. Typically, if something big happens, the earliest it would show up in print would be the following day, but with a full-length article.

Today, newsrooms are expected to release something on the story, when it happens. When I get that notification from the New York Times, the story is certainly still developing. So instead of a full article that you might expect from a print publication, usually they release a short article that acts as a “what we know so far” article. Being online, this article will be updated as they learn more but they have to be careful not to sacrifice truth for being the first to report on the story.

Another way I typically consume online news is through podcasts, specifically NPR. NPR is radio news; however, they do have a website giving their audience the choice of reading along with the broadcast. Most of the time I do not read anything on NPR, I listen to their News Now podcast.

This podcast is no longer than five minutes, and is compiled of four to five short-wraps of the biggest stories. What I love about this podcast is it is updated every hour to ensure their audience is “caught up” much like the notifications I receive from the New York Times.

Another tool online news offers that I utilize is a news aggregator from Google. News aggregators compile stories from many different online publications providing a rundown of the news without having to go to every specific website.

My personal qualm with aggregators and maybe the appeal of them for others, is the personalization. Google News asks for preference of newsrooms, topics, and personalities. This makes it more likely that readers will only see stories they want, but also reinforces or perpetuates their echo chamber.

One thing Google has done with their aggregator to combat this is to put a “related coverage” button next to each story to give the reader background on the story, different perspectives, as well as any newsmaker’s social media posts on the topic. This feature provides a fuller picture of the story than just one print publication’s coverage.

A tradition of print news that online news has attempted to replicate is the act of reading the news in the morning. Most publications have something like “morning briefings.” The briefing is either emailed to the reader or a notification is sent to their device, for me it’s both.

Basically, it starts with a summary of each of the top stories and a link to the full article. The link serves like print’s “see page __” for online news. After the top stories they have the weather in your area for the day, a business summery including a snapshot of the markets and usually they end with “healthier living” and a summary of a feature piece. The briefing is sent out at six in the morning so those who want to be updated on the news before work can do so without having to read full articles. In this way, briefings are like the front page of a paper.

Throughout the last few days of me being more conscious of how I consume online news I have learned that consumers want two things, personalization and convenience. While this does not only apply to consumers of news, it is important to note that demand for personalization and convenience has changed the news industry dramatically. The way I choose to consume news and the way publications try to get me to consume news is evidence of this.

Jake Alverson

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SUNY Oswego Class of 2019-majoring in journalism and political science.