Breaking News 2: When good ads go bad

Breaking News is a series on the self-inflicted fractures breaking the news business. The first was on malvertising. This second report is on the “ad tech tax” everyone pays — in dollars, time and readership.

How to make online news ‘brain friendly’

Online news can work with or against the brain. When RJI Fellows Alex Remington of The Washington Post and media researcher Paul Bolls applied brain science principles to news design, readers’ comprehension, recall and engagement increased. We interviewed the researchers (audio below) to learn how to make articles “brain friendly.” It’s all about the “reading path,” says Remington. “Classify the … Continued

WordPress moves news past the printed newspaper

Local newspaper sites have long broken all the rules for building a sticky site. Most still load painfully slowly. They are difficult to navigate and — let’s be honest — often ugly.—Matthew Hindman, Shorenstein Center For centuries newspaper design has stayed about the same. In 1880 printers introduced halftone photographs and in the 1980s the … Continued