4.1. Web, Mobile, and Multi-Format Consumption
While Spanish online media outlets came to be 25 years ago as complementary digital versions of print media that simply dumped their content and were mainly consumed from desktop computers, the emergence of smartphones and tablets, as well as increased telephone network data capacity, radically modified these habits.
Thus, online media are now leading formats in the consumption of news, much more so than traditional media (
Figure 5). According to the AIMC, in 2019, 51.1% of newspaper audiences access news content exclusively through the internet, as opposed to 31.5% who consume exclusively on paper, and 17.4% who use both formats. This inversion in format preference has not reduced total consumption of news; rather, to the contrary, it has led to total newspaper audiences rising from 36.5% of the population in 2000 to 42.5% in 2019 [
41].
Secondly, while consumption is now mainly online, the desktop computer has lost main device status for consulting news online. In the past 5 years, audience evolution by device [
41] shows that while consumption from personal computer has slightly lowered (from 13.6% to 11.1%), on smartphones it has doubled, reaching 23.5% (
Figure 6). As such, the mobile phone is now very much the main device for consulting online news pieces (58.9%), ahead of computers (28%), tablets (12.8%), and other devices (0.3%).
News media managers corroborate this about-face in news consumption habits, which, in addition to other aspects, entailed a change in the time distribution of audiences, with the emergence of a great peak in information consumption from mobile devices first thing at night, which now joins first thing in the morning (in this case, with most consumption from the computer) and at noon (Interviews I1, I2, I3, I4, I5, I6). The transformation of newsrooms from a paper model, with a closing time to prepare a morning edition, to a 24-h news flow, also forced them to change their work routines.
Thirdly, in a news ecosystem where almost everything has changed, one element remains unalterable: among the readers of the newspapers, online news is still mainly consumed through web browsers (76.7%), much more than apps (19.8%), and other information viewers (3.5%) that have not taken off as news consultation devices (
Figure 7).
4.2. Balance between Text and Images
The history of online news has also been a story of evolution, from an almost exclusively written model to another model where text and images have a balanced, complementary presence. In this section, technological evolution was a powerful conditioning factor on visual evolution, because while the limited internet bandwidth capacity initially fostered heavy text content, today, the balance between text and images reigns, with a model where practically each front-page news piece is accompanied by its own image. Thus, the ratio that relates the number of images to the number of news currently displays an almost complete balance (1:1.2) (
Figure 8).
Amongst texts, headlines have taken on almost exclusive protagonism in designs. Although in the first years imitations of print references led to the inclusion of subheadlines and small text lead-ins on front pages, barring some cases with the top news on the page, practically all front-page news pieces on online media simply have a headline and an image, without any other text accompaniment.
Additionally, the protagonism of images has radically increased. While the limitations of existing networks and the visual legacy of print media made photo news practically the only highlighted visual element on front pages during the first 10 years, in the past 5 years, the analyzed media outlets’ front pages displayed practically 100 images associated with news content.
This radical transformation in the distribution of content cannot be understood without visual protosensitivity in the media, given that, since their beginnings, they linked visual content on their front pages, although this content could not be viewed in integrated fashion from the front pages themselves.
4.3. Saturation and Verticality
Adaptable web design and mobile and multi-format consumption led to online media losing part of the visual singularity that characterized print media, preferring accessibility and adaptability of content. The increasing technification of production processes (with the need to combine different programming languages) took journalists away from online media design tasks, which are now in the hands of web programmers.
In an enormously complex setting of devices and formats, online media prioritize making professionals’ work easier in creating multi-platform content by implementing content management systems (CMS) to simplify content creation and publication tasks to the maximum. While self-publishing programs such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign grant newsrooms control, practically without technical mediation in the process of preparing print newspapers, with the incorporation of the web, the number of languages multiplies, which requires specialized staff with great knowledge of programming, and brings the work of journalists to platforms with limited design options.
However, despite losing part of this visual singularity that characterized print media, online media have incorporated a very characteristic visual trait that sets them apart from other webpages: high saturation of news pieces on extremely vertical homepages.
During their first 10 years of history, homepages scarcely increased in size, and news pieces were almost exclusively text. However, the progressive incorporation of more news pieces on front pages, as well as their accompanying images, fostered an exponential increase in the size of these front pages, multiplying their original size by up to 10 times (
Figure 9).
Despite attempts to seek out a certain balance in the horizontal layout of news content on the page, today, online media are characterized by the extreme verticality of their index-type front pages. Thus, during the first 10 years of history, online media showed a more contained attitude, and their covers included less than 50 news items a day, but since 2010 the trend of publishing a much larger number of content has increased significantly, displaying on average over 100 news pieces and images (in 2020, 134.6 and 111.8, respectively). This trend is seen equally in all the media, although in the case of ABC, the number currently reaches almost 200 (
Figure 10).
Pages to access online media have therefore evolved from a design with a selective display case of content that emulated the front pages of print newspapers, to another, laid out as an exhaustive meta-front page for all sections of the newspaper.
The exuberant supply of content contrasts with readers’ consumption habits. For the time being, general data indicate that reading news on online media continues to be brief and superficial. If we consider three basic indicators (
Table 1) (average visit time, average viewed pages, and bounce rate), we see epidemic consumption of the news pieces supplied. Thus, for the five media outlets analyzed, the average visit duration is 6 min and 16 s, the average pages viewed per visit is 2.9, and the “bounce rate” (meaning, the percentage of visitors who invest less than 30 s in the website before going to a different one) is 54.8% (
Table 2). Higher consumption through mobile phones has worsened this trend, given that they reduce the time spent on reading in comparison with desktop computers.
These consumption habits have at least two implications on design. On one hand, we must also consider people accessing specific news pieces without going through the front page in this average; for example, through links shared on social media. On the other, they explain that online media front pages decide to supply the maximum number of news pieces possible on their front page, so that the visitor who is going to devote a limited amount of time to reading the media outlet can not only do a quick scan of current news but can also quickly find the pieces they wish to read in depth.
Access channels to online media also explain these consumption habits (
Figure 11). In all analyzed media outlets, 38.9% of visits directly access the webpage, writing the name in the address bar, while access through search engines is 49.3% (largely by searching for the name of the outlet), and social media is at 5.6%.
As such, the media’s front pages have lost their status as the exclusive window to access the newspapers. While mobile consumption has encouraged more superficial searches for content that foster the creation of highly saturated index-type front pages, new channels to access contents (search engines and social media) have made journalistic SEO a new window to access news.
Monitoring traffic generated by each one of the news pieces is capitally important for online newsrooms (Interviews I1, I3, I5, I6), although news media managers indicate that the main objective is knowledge of the most loyal users, and not sporadic visitors that may congregate around news pieces. In turn, this policy is aligned with subscription payment policies, which almost all Spanish online media now have.
Regarding hierarchization criteria for news pieces, current events continue to be at the top of front pages, while content with a less journalistic, more lightweight profile (technology, services), are concentrated on the lower half of pages. In the middle, after current events, are highlighted recommended articles (features, interviews) and opinion texts. Hierarchization criteria for news pieces continue to be purely professional, and the media refuse to use automatic configurations to organize their content (Interviews I1, I2, I3, I4, I5).