As Americans turn to the internet more often for election news, some websites that offer such news are providing less useful information than they did four years ago, a new study has found.
A review by the Project for Excellence in Journalism of 10 popular websites that carry political news found they contained less original reporting and fewer links to external sites than in 2000. Web surfers also had fewer opportunities to interact with the sites, the study said.
“We were surprised that they’ve improved in some ways and backtracked in others,” said project director Tom Rosenstiel. “The potential of the web as a place where people can both participate and be consumers is not really here, even to the degree it was four years ago.”
The study examined the political front pages of the eight most popular websites that carry news: ABC, AOL, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and Yahoo. The study also reviewed the online magazine Salon.com and the conservative National Review Online.
While many of the sites offered more stories than four years ago, the survey found that the amount of original content had declined and the sites were using more copy from wire services.
About 63% of the front-page stories constituted original staff reporting, down from 75% when a similar study was done in 2000.
But even content that appears unique to a website often seems to involve modifying wire copy rather that containing truly original work, the study found.
Interactivity — the ability of a user to make comments or talk to others over a website — still is not a big component of online political front pages, the study found. Four of the 10 sites studied offered no ability to interact, while those that did offered less of it than four years ago.
Rosenstiel also said political news sites have reduced the number of links to non-news sites, such as federal and state government websites. Seven of the sites offered no such links at all, which Rosenstiel said keeps them from fulfilling part of their mission to help citizens find other sources of information.
The study did not attempt to rate the best or worst sites.
Rosenstiel did note some improvements. For example, seven of the sites had links on their front pages for users to learn about candidates’ policy positions, including handy ways to compare them.
Sites are also turning more to information that can be customised, enabling users to get all news about a particular candidate or state. — Sapa-AP
On the net: Project for Excellence in Journalism: www.journalism.org