Print Readers Recall More Than Do Online Readers

78 - Newspaper Research Journal • Vol. 34. No. 2 • Spring 2013

Print Readers Recall MoreThan Do Online Readersby Arthur D. Santana, Randall M. Livingstone and Yoon Y. Cho

This Study of print versus online readers looks at howreaders process Information in print versus online format.Among the findings is that print news readers remembersignificantiy more news stories than do those who readcontent online.

-Ln Plato's Phaedrus, the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus closes byquestioning the value of the written word. Writing things down "will atrophy people'smemories," Phaedrus muses.' Since the act of writing will make people rely onthe thoughts of others, "writing will make the things they have learnt disappearfrom their minds."^ Plato's prognostications and the effect the introduction ofnew media would have on people's memories would be debated for generationshence, including at the arrival of Gutenberg's hand-operated printing press inthe 15th century and its eventual replacement by steam-powered rotary presses.

By the mid-17th century, after the British burned the Library of Congress,Thomas Jefferson began donating his personal library of books, his collection of50 years. As the last wagon left Monticello, Jefferson was consumed by regret:"I cannot live without books," he wrote to John Adams.^ It was a sentiment thatspoke to Jefferson's lifelong conviction in the belief that a citizenry informed bythe written word was a hallmark of a healthy democracy. It is a doctrine thatresonates today in the free press that Jefferson helped to establish.

Today, journalism practitioners and scholars find themselves mired ina new debate: How has the message of the written word changed with theintroduction of yet a new method of delivery? In this new age of information.

Santana is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at theUniversity of Houston. Livingstone is an adjunct professor in the School of

Conimunication at Endicott College and Cho is a doctoral student in the School ofJournalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Santana, Livingstone and Cho: Print Readers Recall More - 79

discussions about the role of new media now revolve around topics crossingthe interdisciplinary spectrum, including psychology, linguistics and neurosci-ence, which explores the cognitive processes of how the brain works. At theheart of this discussion, as it was in Plato's fime, is how memory is affected bydifferent media.

Missing from contemporary conversations about the democratic role ofmodern journalism through an informed citizenry is the extent to which some-one not just becomes informed, but remains informed—an inherent funcfionof memory inasmuch as a person's ability to know something is based on ahis or her ability to recall it. If a news item, for example, slips out of a person'smemory, has that information served any useful purpose other than to satistysome fieefing gratification of informafion consumpfion?"

From the arrival of the penny papers, print newspapers were around formore than 100 years when in the 1930s they saw their heyday as the media mostused in the United States for news.' But the Internet took less than 15 years toclaim that mantle when, at the end of 2010, more people got their news fromthe Internet than from newspapers.^ This transformation raises quesfions anewabout the effect that the Web is having on news readers. This study seeks toupdate past research by examining the difference in users' experience in bothmedia—including recall, credibility and amount of story read—at a fime whenonline news consumption has reached a tipping point.

This research is important because, as McLuhan pointed out, medium mat-ters.' As the U.S. public gets its news more from online newspapers and lessfrom print, an examination of the differences in the way news readers processthe informafion they read in either media, including the things they recall andhow trustworthy they find the news, is necessary to elucidate the modern rolenewspapers play in maintaining an informed citizenry.

Literature ReviewNews content recall has long been the focus of scholarly research. For at

least six decades, researchers have examined the extent to which people recallwhat news they consume across media. For example, in 1949, Harrell, Brownand Schramm found that radio listeners were more apt to remember stories thatdealt with human-interest news than stories of more substantive public affairs.*Modern research built upon this concept by examirüng the online interacfivityof radio newscasts. The study showed that moderate levels of interactivity onsites of radio news caused better memory performance compared to lower andhigher levels of interactivity.'

The 1950s saw much research in the area of broadcast media. Williams, Pauland Ogilvie found that television viewers and radio listeners were more likely toremember messages than those consumers exposed to print items, although theresearch did not delve into news items.'" Booth examined newscasts from sevenradio stations and six television channels as well as news items from two local


newspapers in 1962 and found that news items that were assigned a prominentspot were recalled more readily than news items that were not. Booth concludedthat since news organizations have the power to decide a story's placement andprominence, they have the power to make certain news stories reside longer inreaders' memories." However, if someone is particularly interested in a specifictopic, the effect of manipulating those variables is limited.'^

Katz, Adoni and Parness found in 1977 that those who saw and heard newson television recalled slightly more than those who only heard the news on theradio alone, giving credence to the idea that pictures help the recall process.'^They also found that better-educated subjects were significantiy more likely torecall news than were less-educated subjects. Both areas would be explored ingreater depth in future years.'"

By the 1980s, when newspapers began incorporating more use of colorgraphics, charts and maps, researchers found that such elements improved readerperformance and recall only slightiy. ' Broader, more large-scale research in whichsubjects were exposed to news stories in one of four media—newspapers, com-puters, television and radio—found that users remembered significantiy morefacts from news stories via newspapers and computer screens than the samenews stories from television and radio." That research incorporated the use ofcontrolled conditions, including simulated newspapers and screens as stimuli.At the time of the research in 1992, researchers acknowledged that the computerscreen was not commonly used as a news medium. Nevertheless, researcherssuggested that the very nature of the media might offer an explanation; unlikenewspapers, radio and television are media that are not exclusively dedicatedto news and might be apt to be used in conjunction with other daily activities.

In 1990, the Poynter Institute began using equipment that would allow re-searchers to follow readers' eyes in order to see where they focused on a page. Inthe first EyeTrack study, researchers found that print newspaper readers entereda printed page through the largest image on the page. That was followed bythe headline before the text of a story. Captions under photos were the thirdmost frequently visited part of the printed page." In the second iteration ofthe study, researchers focused on the Web and found that, unlike print readerswho entered the page through images, readers on websites entered throughtext and headlines. The finding corifirmed a suspicion that reading online wasmore like reading a book, where one concentrates on the text and prefers thephotos to appear separately so as not to interrupt the flow of the narrative.'^

While the EyeTrack technology can show researchers how long a readerrests on an item, it cannot measure how much information a reader retains. Todo that, Poynter researchers created prototypes, three in print and three online.Overall, researchers found that print readers remembered more than onlinereaders." One explanation was that the fixed nature of the print prototype,where all the information on a topic was available on a single broadsheet page(as opposed to the online prototype, which appeared on as many as six screens),made readers absorb the details of the story better and more effectively. "


Tewksbury and Althaus examined the difference in memory retentionof The New York Times' print and online editions in 1998 ' at a time when theTimes' Web presence was still in its infancy. Researchers, who queried groupsof mostly undergraduates by exposing them to The New York Times' print andonline versions in a classroom-like setting over a week-long period, found thatonline readers were less likely to begin their reading with international, nationaland political news. They were also less likely to spend a large portion of theirreading time with those sorts of news stories, thus less likely to recall them."Researchers offered a possible explanation: Online newspapers (in 1998) wereapt to provide fewer cues about news story importance, thus giving readersmore control over story selection, creating a scenario in which they read andacquired less information about national, international and political events thandid print readers." In this way, "the mode of delivery had its greatest impacton the most prominent stories of the day. That the channel had less impact onrelatively trivial events," the authors wrote, "should come as no comfort tothose worried about the impact of Internet news reading."^''

A decade later, researchers reached similar conclusions in a comparisonof television and online news. Concluding that people had a higher recall fortelevision news than online news, researchers posited that the lack of saliencecues on an index-style website allowed users to explore a wider variety of sto-ries when compared to the linear format of television, thus diminishing theirrecall ability." Both of these studies supported the idea that online news readerscreate their own list of top stories without the agenda-setting influence of thenews organization, a practice that has an effect on their ability to rememberwhat they read.

Some researchers have rejected the notion that there's a difference in thereading and retention habits of online and print news readers. Sundar et al.found no significant difference in memory retention for news story contentacross print and online media,^' and D'Haenens and Jankowski concludedthat news consumption appears to be more dependent on the news category,readers' gender and interest in a particular topic than on whether the newsappears in print or online."

Other research has examined the extent to which visuals and website de-sign affect retention of news items among readers. For example, multimediacomponents of online newspapers were examined to see which interactiveelements aided in reader comprehension. Moore tested 84 undergraduate stu-dents, asking them to view one of two versions of the same website—one withmultimedia and one without. Findings did not support a significant difference incomprehension, recall or response arising fi'om the presence or absence of multimedia. 'Other researchers found that recall was sigrüficantiy higher after participantsread an online story with text orüy or with photo and caption options comparedwith an orüine story that orüy had photos with captions or animated graphics.^'Contrary to the Poynter study, Pipps et al. concluded that from a recall perspec-tive, text alone or text with photos or graphic elements combined are the best


methods for presenting information online. "News organizations... should focuson what they do best—write news stories and provide photos and/or graphicsthat illustrate them," the researchers wrote.'"

Few studies have examined people's assessment of the credibility of informa-tion found on the Internet,^ ' and research on the credibility of traditional-versus-Internet sources has not produced consistent findings. For example, Johnsonand Kaye found in 1996 that self-described politically interested Internet usersfound online political informationsources more credible than theirtraditional media counterparts, al-though respondents had an overalllow opinion of the credibility of theinformation in both media." Theresearchers later updated their workand found that online informationcredibility scores jumped in 2000,then declined in 2004. Overall, on-line sources were judged the mostcredible and online broadcast TVnews sources the least credible.'^

Another survey of Internet us-ers found that news sources werenot found to be more credible thantraditional sources.^* Researchersfound that there was only a slighttendency for people to believe thatthey could find more accurate infor-mation online than in a newspaperor on television news. Still otherresearchers found that traditionalmedia sources were deemed bynews readers to be more fair and un-biased than their Web counterpartsfor political information."

Flanagin and Metzger examined people's perceptions of the credibility ofvarious categories of Internet information compared to similar information pro-vided by other media. The researchers found that while respondents reported thatthey considered Internet information to be as credible as information obtainedfrom television, radio and magazines, they considered newspaper informationto be more credible.^' While the Internet was used more for information retrievalthan virtually all other media," it differed from other technologies used foririformation retrieval in key ways regarding reliability and credibility as aninformation source.^' Their research, conducted in 1998 and 1999, found thatnewspapers were rated significantly higher in credibility than the other media

777/s research suggests thatthe development of dynamiconline story forms, at leastin the past decade, has hadlittle effect toward makingthem more likely to berecalled than print stories.


regardless of the type of information considered, including news, reference,entertainment or commercial information. Internet information was found tobe as credible as information found in magazines and on radio and television.^'

The current research updates the research of DeFleur et al. and Flanaganand Metzger, and also builds on their model, as well as others,"" which haveincorporated the use of simulated newspapers, by conducting an experimentwith a real newspaper and its actual, real-time accompanying website in orderto better emulate real-world conditions. This research intentionally set out toavoid artificiality by using the naturally occurring flow of news as it happens.As Tewksbury and Althaus pointed out,

rather than having read a highly stylized version of the news, subjects...read the actual news of the day in precisely the format that hundredsof thousands of people across the country read it."'

Research QuestionsConsidering these ideas, the following research questions are asked:

R01:Does type of medium affect users' recollection of news stories?

R02:Does type of medium affect users' recollection of specific features of news

stories, including headlines, general topics and main points?

R03:Does type of medium affect the amount of news stories consumed?

R04:Does type of medium affect the credibility of news stories?

R05:For online users, which news format was the most popular?

R06:For online users, which multimedia tool was most used?

MethodAll participants for the study were undergraduate journalism-related majors

at a large U.S. urüversity. Interested participants, solicited through an open-call

84 - Newspaper Research Journal • Vol. 34, No. 2 • Spring 2013

email, were prescreened for the study by complefing a short questionnaire. Inorder to randomly assign pardcipants to either of two conditions (the print oronline version of The New York Times), all eligible parficipants were requiredto have at least a minimum level of comfort reading the news in each format;subjects who indicated that they "almost never" read the news in one or bothof these media were not allowed to parficipate in the study. The sample size (N= 45) was comparable to other studies that considered recall in print and onlinemedia.'' The mean age of the sample was 22. Parficipafion involved a one-day,one-hour lab session, and all parficipants were compensated for their fime.*'

The same-day hardcopy edifion and live website from The New York Timeswere used on each day of the study. Previous studies of news content recallhave used constructed or manipulated media products to control for expo-sure effects.** However, as this research endeavored to approximate a real-lifenewspaper reading experience, the authentic news products served as moreappropriate stimuli.*' Eligible participants were randomly assigned to one oftwo possible condifions for the experiment—hardcopy (n = 25) and online (n= 20). On the day prior to their session, participants received an email askingthem to conduct a news "blackout" on the day of their session by avoiding anynews consumption that morning.

Upon arriving at a campus computer lab, participants were given twotasks: read that day's newspaper for 20 minutes and then complete an onlinesurvey. Those assigned to the hardcopy condition were given a copy of thatmorning's New York Times, while those assigned to the online condifion weredirected to The Times' website. Parficipants were instructed to use the readingperiod to peruse the newspaper in any manner they wished. Because the studywas primarily interested in issues of recall, participants were not instructed tokeep track of which stories they read; indeed, no menfion that the study wasabout their recall ability was made.

After the reading period was over, participants were asked to note the head-lines, general topics and main points of as many stories as they could remember.Parficipants were instructed to indicate all iriformafion they could recall foreach news item and leave blank any fields they could not recall. Parficipantswere then asked to indicate how much of the story they read using a five-pointLikert-scale, with "5" indicafing they read the whole story and " 1 " indicatingthey glanced over it. Next, they were asked how credible they found the storiesusing a five-point Likert scale, with "5" indicafing they strongly agreed the storywas credible and "1" indicating they strongly disagreed.

Finally, the online group was asked two addifional quesfions not asked ofthe print group. First, they were asked to specity the format of each news item,including whether it was a news story, a blog, a video, photo gallery or a stand-alone graphic. Second, they were asked how they engaged the news, includingwatching a video, listening to audio, posting a comment, clicking on an adver-fisement, scrolling through a photo gallery, clicking on a hyperlink embeddedin a story, taking a poll, watching an interactive graphic or just reading text.


FindingsThe main objective of this study

was to examine whether readers'recollection of new s stories varies bymedium. For background informa-tion, the study queried participantsabout their main source of news.While 76.9 percent of respondentsreported their main source of thenews was the Internet, 19.2 percentreported that their main sourceof news was a print newspaper.About 17.3 percent and 7.7 percentof respondents reported that theirmain news source was televisionand radio respectively. The studyalso queried participants for thefrequency of consumption of bothprint and online newspapers. [SeeTable 1]

The tirst research question askedwhether type of medium affectsreaders' recollection of news sto-ries.

In order to increase the preci-sion of the experiment by reducingwithin-group error variance andeliminating confounds, an analy-sis of covariance (ANCOVA) wasconducted. The study assumes that print and online newspaper readershipfrequency is related to news recall. An ANCOVA makes it possible to statisti-cally remove the effect of covariance (frequency of newspaper readership) thatmight affect news recall. The result shows that the main effect was significant,f (1,40) = 4.14, p < .05. Print news readers remembered significantiy more newsstories (M Print = 4.24) than online news readers (M Online = 3.35). [See Table 2]

The second research question asked whether type of medium affects readers' recol-lection of specific features of news stories.

A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was run to see whetherthe type of medium affects three dimensions of news story recall (headlines,general topics and main points), removing covariance from two variables (fre-quency of print and online newspaper readership) that presumably confound

Table 1Frequency of Print and OnlineMedia Consumption

Frequency

Never

Less frequentlythan once a month

Once a month

Two or threedays a month

Once a week

Two or three daysa week

Everyday

Missing value

Total

Print

1(2.2%)

3(6.7%)

5(11.1%)

9(20.0%)

8(17.8%)

15(33.3%)

3(6.7%)

1(0%)

45

News

Online

0(0%)

4(8.9%)

3(6.7%)

1(2.2%)

8(178%)

17(37.8%)

12(26.7%)

0(0%)

45

86 - Newspaper Research Journal * Vol. 34. No. 2 * Spring 2013

Table 2Analysis of Covariance of Recollection of News Stories for Print andOnline Newspaper with Frequency of Newspaper Readership as Covariate

Test df

CovariateFreq. of print news

readership 1Freq. of online news

readership 1

Main effectA type of medium 1

Error 40

MS F

6.53 .56

6.83 .58

48.66 4.14*

11.75

Note: Partial Eta Squared is a measure of effect size.*p < .05

P

.46

.45

.04

PartialEta Squared

.01

.01

.94

the main effect. The results showed a significant effect for the type of mediumon two specific features of news stories, Wilks Lambda (3, 38) = .78, p < .05.The results specifically showed that on a five-point scale, print news readersremembered significantly more topics (M Print= 4.16) than online news readers(M Online= 2.82), f (1, 40) = 8.68, p < .01. Also on a five-point scale, print news

Table 3Multivariate Analyses of Covariance of Headlines, Topics and Main PointsFor Print and Online Newspaper with Frequency of Newspaper Readershipas Covariate

Source

CovariateFreq. of PNRFreq. of ONR

Main effectMedium Type

MANCOVAF(3,38)

.98

.96

.78*

HeadlineRecall

.70

.01

.28

ANOVA

pa, mTopic Recall

.201.24

8.68**

Main PointRecall

.461.35

6.31*

Error

Note: f ratios are Wilks's approximation ofF. ANOVA = univariate analysis of variance;MANCOVA = multivariate analysis of covariance; PNR (print newspaper readership),ONR (online newspaper readership)'p < .05, "p < .01

Santana, Livingstone and Gho: Print Readers Recall More - 87

readers recalled more main points of news stories (M Print = 3.96) than onlinenews readers (M Online = 2.82), f (1,40) = 6.31, p < .05. However, readers in printand online groups did not show significant differences in their recollection ofheadlines of the news stories they read. [See Table 3]

Tbe tbird researcb question asked wbetber type of medium affects tbe amount ofnews stories consumed.

A one-way between-subjects ANCOVA was calculated to compare theamount of news consumption between two groups. In order to examine theeffect of a type of medium on the amount of news consumption, the confound-ing variable of participants' frequency of newspaper readership was set as acovariate. The results showed that on a five-point scale, print readers readslightly less of a news story (M Print = 3.99) than online readers (M Online =4.15). Although there was a difference between the groups, the difference didnot generate significant results, f (1, 40) = .65, p = .43.

Tbe fourtb researcb question asked wbetber tbe type of medium affects tbe cred-ibility of news stories.

The results showed that on a five-point scale, online readers gave slightlymore credibility to news stories (M Online = 4.26) than did print readers (MPrint = 4.18), although the difference was not significant, F(l, 40) = .54, p = .47.

Tbe fiftb question asked participants assigned to tbe oniine group wbat news for-mats tbey used.

The news story was the most popular (61.7 percent) format followed byblogs (14.8 percent).

Tbe sixtb question asked bow participants engaged oniine news.Reading text alone was the most popular way (69.1 percent) news readers

engaged the news, while clicking on hyperlinks embedded in text and scrollingthrough photo galleries were the second and third more popular (8.8 percent).[See Table 4]

DiscussionThis study updates prior research conducted at a time when online newspa-

pers were still somewhat of a new phenomenon in the mass media landscape.It supports the idea that print newspapers are a more effective medium thanonline newspapers at spurring recollection; in 20 minutes of reading, printreaders remembered an average of 4.24 news stories while online readers re-called an average of 3.35 stories. This research suggests that the developmentof dynamic online story forms, at least in the past decade, has had littie effecttoward making them more likely to be recalled than print stories.

Scholars have offered a variety of possible explanations. The very nature

i - Newsvaver Research Journal • Vol. 34. No. 2 • Svrinç 2013

of the Web asa medium thathas subsumedvirtually allothers makesit a site for avariety of uses,including com-merce, commu-nication, newsconsumption,gaming andother enter-tainment. Theprint newspa-per, however,is generallydedicated tonews. Thus inchoosing a par-ticular medi-um, users bringpreformed at-titudes aboutwhat to expect.Unlike printnews, onlinenews is ephem-eral; it can ap-pear and disap-pear without

warrüng, creating an element of disfracfion, what DeFleur and Davenportcalled "factors of confextual interference.""* If can also hasten the impressionthat since the text and headlines—things Poynter researchers found to be theentry point for Web readers—are apt to vanish, they are perhaps not worthremembering. At the same time, the knowledge that the information they canfind online, even if it disappears after reading, is immediately electrorücallyarchived and thus imminently retrievable may make readers less apt to feelthey need to store it in their memory.

When it comes to the amount of a story read, both print and online readersappear to read about the same amount. This research shows that both print andonline news consumers read most of the stories they start. Print news readers,however, remembered sigrüficantly more topics than did online news readers.One interpretation is that online readers might tend to scan stories while print

Table 4Summary of Online Groups' Format Use and Engagement

Pormat

News story

Blog

Photo gallery

Stand alone graphic

Video

Others

Photo gallerywith audio

Total

Use(n = Yes)

50(61.7%)

12(14.8%)

6(7.4%)

4(4.9%)

4(4.9%)

4(4.9%)

1(1.2%)

81

Engaging the News

Just read text

Clicked onhyperlink

Scrolled throughphoto gallery

Engagement(n = Yes)

47(69.1%)

6(8.8%)

6(8.8%)

Watched interactive 3graphics (4.4%)

Clicked onadvertisement

Took a poll

Listened audio

Watched video

Posted a comment

Total

2(2.9%)

2(2.9%)

1(1.5%)

1(1.5%)

0(0%)

68


readers might tend to be more methodical, which could be explained by theidea that a print newspaper is a medium expressly designed for the dissemina-fion of news as well as the research that has found that print newspapers offernews stories with more depth and breadth than online stories.*' Researchershave also pointed to not just the fixed nature of the print news story but how allthe informafion is usually available on one or two pages. Online news stories,which are somefimes interrupted with an online ad in the middle of the text,are more apt to appear or be available on several pages of a newspaper's web-site under different headings; the scattershot nature of the online news storycoupled with its fleeting nature make the online news consumer's experiencequite different from that of a print reader.

Finally, a common explanation for the reason news readers found printnews more infiuenfial than online news stories was the design of each medium.Online newspapers are apt to give fewer cues about the news story's impor-tance, thus giving readers more control over story selection. In this way, partof the agenda-setfing funcfion of the newspaper is lost in the online version.*^Online readers are apt to acquire less information about nafional, internafionaland political events than are print news readers because of the lack of saliencecues; they generally are not being told what to read via fixed story placementand prominence—an enduring feature of the print product.

One of the most interesfing findings of this research demonstrates howusers are not inclined to engage with multimedia tools on online newspaperwebsites. Most readers favored the text of a story, and subsequent engagementwith mulfimedia tools dramafically dropped off. This lack of multimedia usemay be a result of the experimental setting (lacking earphones, for example)and the limited reading period. The findings perhaps also explain the lack ofsignificant differences in credibility assessment and amount of story consumed,as online reader habits still seem to mirror hardcopy reader habits.

Carr cites the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who pointed outin the 1960s that media are not just passive charmels of irvformafion. Rather,Carr wrote:

they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process ofthought, and what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at mycapacity for concentration and contemplation.''^

Carr argues that with the ubiquity of the Internet, the very nature of theway we read has changed. In this way, he argues, we can begin to think of theprinted word and the digital word not as two distinct media but rather howone begins to affect the other.

The implications of the research should inform the resource priorifies ofnewspapers as they confinue to see sweeping changes in the readership habitsof their print and online audience. Newspapers, as they confinue to place ahigh priority on strengthening their online presence and building brand loyalty.

90 - Newsvaver Research Journal • Vol. 34. No. 2 • Svrinç 2013

should be aware of the shifting ways readers are engaging both media andthe extent to which their role in preserving democracy through an informedcitizenry is being transformed.

Limitations

The age of the participants in this research is not representative of thegeneral population and should be noted as a limitation. The 2012 Pew State ofthe News Media notes that a Scarborough Research survey shows while printnewspaper readership has fallen for all age groups, 23 percent of people aged18-24 reported reading a newspaper daily in 2011, about the same percentageof people 25-34 years old. ° Participants were prescreened for a minimum levelof comfort and experience reading newspapers both in print and online, thusalleviating the likelihood that participants were not newspaper readers.

Notes1. Plato and Robin Waterfield, Phaedrus (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69.2. Ibid.3. Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Ufe (New York: H. Holt, 1993), 587.4. The most direct application of this idea from a journalistic perspective is the citizen in a

voting booth. The vote they cast, the epitomic act of a democratic society, relies on his or her abilityto recall news information that the journalist has provided. How that voter chooses to receive thatinformation, however, has changed dramatícally in recent years.

5. George H. Douglas, TheColden AgeoftheNeivspaper (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999).6. Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell, "The State of the News Media 2011," Pew Research Center's

Project for Excellence in Journalism, accessed May 17, 2012, <http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/overview-2 / >.

7. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill,1965).

8. Thomas W. Harrell, Donald E. Brown and Wilbur Schramm, "Memory in Radio NewsListening," Journal of Applied Psychology 33, no. 3 (1949): 265-274.

9. Hesham M. Mesbah, "The Impact of Linear Versus Nonlinear Listening to Radio News onRecall and Comprehension," Journal of Radio Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 187-200.

10. Donald C. Williams, John Paul and John C. Ogilvie, "Mass Media, Learning, and Retention,"Canadian Journal of Psychology 11, no. 3 (1957): 157-163.

11. Alan Booth, "The Recall of News Items," Public Opinion Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1970/1971):604-610.

12. Ibid. •13. Elihu Katz, Hanna Adoni and Pnina Parness, "Remembering the News: What the Picture

Adds to Recall," Journalism Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1977): 231-239.14. Juliette H. Walma van der Molen and Marlies E. Klijn, "Recall of Television Versus Print

News: Retesting the Semantic Overlap Hypothesis," Journal ofBroadcasting & Electronic Media 48,no. 1 (2004): 89-107; Prabu David and Jagdeep Kang, "Pictures, High-Imagery News Language andNews Recall," Newspaper Research Journal 19, no. 3 (1998): 21-30.

15. Jyotika Ramaprasad, "Informational Graphics in Newspapers," Newspaper Research Journal12, no. 3 (1991): 92-103.

16. Melvin L. DeFleur and Lucinda Davenport, "Audience Recall of News Stories Presentedby Newspaper, Computer, Television and Radio," Journalism Quarterly 69, no. 4 (1992): 1010-1022.


17. Pegie Stark Adam, Sara Quinn and Rick Edmonds, Eyetracking the News: A Study of Printand Online Reading (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Poynter Institiite, 2007).

18. Ibid.19.Ibid.20. Ibid.21. David Tewksbury and Scott L. Althaus, "Differences in Knowledge Acquisition among

Readers of the Paper and Online Versions of a National Newspaper," Journalism and MassCommunication Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2000): 457-479.

22. Ibid.23. Ibid.24. Ibid, 472.25. Mike Conway and Jeffrey R. Patterson, "Today's Top Story? An Agenda-Setting and Recall

Experiment Involving Television and Internet News," Southwestern Mass Communication Journal24, no. 1 (2008): 31-48.

26. S. Shyam Sundar et al., "Does Web Advertising Work? Memory for Print vs. Online Media?,"Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75, no. 4 (1998): 822-835.

27. Leen D'Haenens, Nicholas Jankowski and Ard Heuvelman, "News in Online and PrintNewspapers: Differences in Reader Consumption and Recall," New Media & Society 6, no. 3 (2004):363-382: 380.

28. Leigh T.Moore (Berry), "Comprehension and Recall of Internet News: AQuantitativeStudyof Web Page Design," Journal of Magazine & New Media Research 3, no. 1 (2000).

29. Val Pipps, Heather Walter, Kathleen Endres and Patrick Tabatcher, "Information Recall ofInternet News: Does Design Make a Difference? A Pilot Study," Journal of Magazine & New MediaResearch 11, no. 1 (2009): 2-20.

30. Ibid, 10.31. Thomas J. Johnson and Barbara K. Kaye, "Cruising Is Believing?: Comparing Internet and

Traditional Sources on Media Credibility Measures," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly75, no. 2 (1998): 325-340.

32. Ibid.33. Thomas J. Johnson and Barbara K. Kaye, "Still Cruising and Believing? An Analysis of Online

Credibility across Three Presidential Campaigns," American Behavioral Scientist 5i, no. 1 (2010): 57-77.34. "The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary," Pew Research Center for the People & the Press,

January 14, 1999, <http://people-press.org/report/72/>.35. John Mashek, Larry McGill and Adam C. Powell, Lethargy '96: How the Media Covered

a Listless Campaign (Nashville, TN: The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at VanderbiltUniversity, 1997).

36. Miriam J. Metzger and Andrew J.FIanagin,"Perceptionsof Internetinformation Credibility,"Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2000): 515-540.

37. Andrew J. Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger, "Internet Use in the Contemporary MediaEnvironment," Human Communication Research 27, no. 1 (2001): 153-181.

38. Metzger and Flanagin, "Perceptions of Internet Information Credibility."39.Ibid.40. Sundar et al., "Does Web Advertising Work? Memory for Print vs. Online Media?"41. Tewksbury and Althaus, "Differences in Knowledge Acquisition among Readers of the

Paper and Online Versions of a National Newspaper," 464.42. Marilyn Y. Jones, Robin Pentecost and Gabrielle Requena, "Memory for Advertising

and Information Content: Comparing the Printed Page to the Computer Screen," Psychology &Marketing 22, no. 8 (2005): 623-648; Sundar et al., "Does Web Advertising Work? Memory for Printvs. Online Media?"

43. Each participant received a $10 gift card and was entered into a drawing for an iPod Nano.44. Katherine Gallagher, K. Dale Foster and Jeffrey Parsons, "The Medium Is Not the Message:


Advertising Effectiveness and Content Evaluation in Print and on the Web," Journal of AdvertisingResearch 41 (2001): 57-70; Jones, Pentecost and Requena, "Memory for Advertising and InformationContent: Comparing the Printed Page to the Computer Screen; " Sundar et al., "Does Web Ad vertisingWork? Memory for Print vs. Online Media?"

45. The online version of The New York Times, as with many online newspapers, is not an exactduplicate of the print version on any given day; there is online-only content, such as blogs, as wellas content that remains on the website for many days past the print publication date. Additionally,research has found that print newspapers not only offered longer stories but also more stories. (SeeScott R. Maier, "Newspapers Offer More News Than Do Major Online Sites," Newspaper ResearchJournal 31, no. 1 (2010): 6-19).

46. DeFleur and Davenport, "Audience Recall of News Stories Presented by Newspaper,Computer, Television and Radio," 1012.

47. Maier, "Newspapers Offer More News Than Do Major Online Sites."48. While they are apt to appear and disappear in any give news cycle, stories on the Times

website generally do come with some cues as to the story's importance. Online stories, sometimesthe left side of the website and centered photos at the top of the scroll and directly beneath theonline banner can be understood to be roughly the equivalent of the front-page, "headline" story,thus denoting its importance.

49. Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid? Why You Can't Read the Way You Used To,"Atlantic Monthly 302, v. 1 (2008): 56-63: 57.

50. Rick Edmonds, Emily Guskin, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell, "The State of the News Media2012," Newspapers By the Numbers, Demographic Data, March 19, 2012, <http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-digital-revenues-proves-painfully-slow/newspapers-by-the-numbers/>.

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Print Readers Recall More Than Do Online Readers

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