In June 2008, AP released a report called “A New Model for News”. On behalf of AP, the Context-Based Research Group of Baltimore, Maryland, conducted a cultural science study --an ethnography-- focusing on the news consumption habits of young digital consumers in six cities around the world. The study that AP distributed in June as a report reaches interesting conclusions, and not only for online newspapers or news sites. It teaches a lot about web visitor behaviour.

This article will cover those AP report’s findings which are relevant to all publishers. In separate stories I will elaborate on what is needed to satisfy the needs AP’s study uncovered and how you must translate these requirements into technologies and IT products.

The AP report’s conclusions revolve around a couple of simple assessments. The first is people are tired of reading small snippets of news and need to get in-depth information that explains the context of a snippet of information. The snippet or item that serves to raise the attention can be delivered through one channel (e-mail, for example), while the background information can be delivered by another channel.

Give readers control

A second conclusion reads that people need to gain control over what is deep, relevant content for them, with publishers eliminating as much repetition as possible in their news and bringing closure to stories whenever possible.

Finally, publishers need to create content that supports sharing among content consumers. This implies better search and sharing mechanisms need to be in place. Based on these conclusions, AP came up with a new model for news. This new model is based on entry points and leaves the traditional, paper-based upside-down pyramid container paradigm for news stories (most important things first, with least important details last in paragraphs that follow each other in a linear fashion) behind. 

Instead, AP introduces a new system of spheres that evoke the atomisation of news in the digital space where headlines, photos and video clips can be pulled from web sites and re-distributed through e-mail, search and sharing. In AP’s model the Facts and Updates are the most important entry points with editors becoming “information officers” who find ways to connect a story’s entry points for users, providing them with more information then they could find by searching and scrolling.

The AP study confirmed the need to maintain two parallel tracks of work. The easiest is to create more appealing content for the key entry points. The more difficult is to build the connections that will transport consumers to that content across both media platform and brand.

The most interesting about AP’s study is that it can be applied to most content that has a relationship to general or industry news, which is exactly what lifestyle and trade magazines are about. While these publications may bring more background information to news stories, instead of news first and background later, the AP conclusions can easily be applied to those stories by changing the key entry points.

For those publications, the key entry points may then become the Back Story with the facts, the updates and the future stories / spin-offs as secondary points of attention.