Cooke, L. (2005). A visual convergence of print, television, and the internet: charting 40 years of design change in news presentation. New Media & Society, 7(1), 22-46.
Alexandra Mechkova
OP652
June 30, 2008
Introduction
The article examines the continuous interaction between newspapers, TV news programs and news websites, which has eventually resulted in their visual convergence. The study aims to explore the longitudinal visual development of all three media. A primary goal of the study is to present the historical context within which the convergence occurs in order to provide for a better understanding of the phenomenon. For this purpose, the author of the article has employed a holistic approach, in which the media is not “seen in isolation, but as one set of social institutions, interacting with other institutions within the wider social system” (Halloran, 1998, p.27).
The analysis of the visual development of these media from 1960 to 2002 revealed that in fact the visual convergence between the media has become stronger over the decades. This visual evolution is a result of the play of social, cultural and technological forces. The importance of the study at hand lies in the fact that no previous research has examined “how specific designs form and migrate across media over time” (p.23).
Theoretical Framework
Cooke’s study on visual convergence (2005) is based on the theoretical frameworks created by Manovich (2001), and Bolter and Grusin (1999). The former contends that every study of new media should be based on both past and present studies of arts, popular culture, computer technologies and information design. In addition, Bolter and Grusin (1999) used the term “remediation” to describe the process, in which new media develop their presentation style through their relationship with their media predecessors.
According to Cooke (2005), visual convergence of “media outlets, technologies and processes creates a unique cultural/visual environment in which designs distinctive of one medium can easily be appropriated by another” (p.25); thus no one communication style can be associated with just one, specific medium.
News Sources and Methodology
The study examined newspaper front pages, TV news programs and news websites home pages for a period of forty years.
The newspapers studied were The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and USA Today. The subjects of the analysis were only the front pages, as they establish the overall newspaper look; Saturday and Sunday editions were not included in the sample.
The TV evening news programs examined were ABC World News Tonight (1968), NBC Nightly News (1968), CBS Evening News (1968), CNN World View (1996), CNN Headline News (2000), MSNBC Newsfront (2000), and CNBC Market Wrap (2000).
The websites studied included the stand alone websites Salon.com and TheStreet.com; the newspaper-affiliated USAToday.com, NYT.com, ChicagoTribune.com, Boston.com/globe, and Latimes.com; and the TV news-affiliated ABCnews.go.com, CBSnews.cbs.com, MSNBC.com/news/nightly, CNN.com, and MSNBC.com/news.
Central to the study is the term scannable design, which describe designs “where information is visually structured to improve reader accessibility” and which “enable the reader to quickly grasp the relationship between items” (p.29). Scannable design consists of elements that can be grouped in two categories: structure and graphics. Structure is the layout of the information presented on the page or screen, and graphics is the presentation of information with pictures, such as photographs, illustrations and maps.
Trends by Decades: Moving Towards a Visual Convergence
1960s: Streamlined layout
In the 1960s, newspapers design was very similar across publications. Newspapers had “streamlined layout” (p.30). For example, the six-column design of the The Los Angeles Times was characterized by “increased gutter size […] and hierarchy of information through typeface standardization” (p.30) (Figure 1). TV news programs of the early 1970s were characterized by minimal white space on the screen, which was dominated by large graphics and filmed footage (Figure 2).
1970s: Spacious layout and composite graphics
The newspaper design of the 1970s was characterized by a clearer grouping of related information into modules. The newspapers’ visuals were dominated by the modular design and the primary graphic element that appeared on front pages was photographs (Figure 3). This graphically appealing newspaper visual design was largely influenced by television, since TV viewers were also newspaper readers.
TV news programming also used modular design as a tool to preview and summarize top news stories (Figure 4). For a clearer message and more appealing content, television news programs used small graphics to the side of the news anchor (Figure 5).
1980s: Information acceleration through design
In the 1980s, graphic and structural elements in both newspapers and TV news programs accelerated the visual delivery of news. Newspapers were characterized by a “scan-and-go” presentation style, in which news summaries consisted of short, one-sentence teasers. Readers could find more about items that interested them within the newspaper (Figure 6). Information graphics contributed to presenting information in a more visually accessible manner, displaying the essence of the story by a combination of text and pictures (Figure 7).
The presentation style of television news programs also changed significantly, mainly under the influence of CNN. The new “command center look” was “scannable because the multiple video monitors and busy newsroom backdrop created more onscreen action and focal points for the viewers” (Figure 8). In addition to the “command center look”, eye-popping visuals added more on-screen action to the more visually poor news stories (Figure 9).
1990-2002: The internet joins in the media mix
The phenomenon of information acceleration, characteristic of the 1980s, continued in the 90s, when a new information medium appeared – the internet.
There are three stages of development of news websites design. In the first stage, website structure was characterized by a “three-panel layout”, with “a top identifier panel, a left navigation panel, and a right content panel” (p.37) (Figure 10).
The way news websites were structured during the second stage was similar to the newspaper front page format, with many points of entry, thumbnail-sized images, and headlines with brief descriptions, on which readers could click to read further (Figure 11). This stage of website design was characterized by a word-plus-graphic trend, which aimed to attract both text-oriented and image-oriented readers; a trend also present in newspapers of the time (Figure 12).
The third stage in news website design was dominated by a modular design, where information was visually departmentalized by the use of white spaces, banners, and color (Figure 13).
This modular presentation style contributed to a more scannable design of news websites, which was also transported to TV news programs. News programs had a highly segmented structure, in which information departmentalization was achieved by the split of the television screen into three panels: bottom scrolling panel, a left (or right panel), and an anchor/video footage content panel (Figure 14 and Figure 15).
In conclusion, this article showed that a highly scannable information module presentation style has developed across the media throughout the past four decades, beginning in the 1970s. Thus, the “information module structure, characteristic of news design in print, television, and the internet – demonstrates a point of visual convergence among the media” (p.41).
References:
Bolter, J.D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: understanding new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Halloran, J. (1998). Mass communication research: asking the right questions. In A. Hansen, S. Cottle, R. Negrine & C. Newbold (Eds.), Mass communication research methods (pp.9-34). New York, NY: New York University Press.
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.