New Media & Society
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A visual convergence of print, television, and the internet: charting 40
years of design change in news presentation
Lynne Cooke
New Media Society 2005; 7; 22
DOI: 10.1177/1461444805049141
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new media & society
Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
Vol7(1):22–46 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444805049141]
ARTICLE
A visual convergence of
print, television, and the
internet: charting 40 years
of design change in news
presentation
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
LYNNE COOKE
University of North Texas, USA
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Abstract
Changes in the visual presentation of news media provide
insight into the complex, dynamic relationships that exist
between print, television, and the internet. This study
explores the longitudinal visual development of five major
newspapers, seven network and cable news programs, and
twelve news websites by examining the progression of
structural and graphic design elements that contribute to
the trend of ‘scannable’ information presentation. The
analysis is broken down by decade, beginning in 1960 and
ending in 2002, and the findings indicate that a visual
convergence of media has become more pronounced over
the decades as the acceleration of information has
increased over time. Implications of this study regarding
interdisciplinary research are explored and future research
avenues are discussed in the conclusion.
Key words
convergence • newspaper design • news website •
presentation trends • television news • visual
communication
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Cooke: Visual convergence
The visual distinctions between print, television, and the internet are
rapidly dissolving as presentation styles seamlessly traverse media boundaries.
We need only to tune into CNN Headline News, pick up a copy of USA
Today, or log on to a news website to witness a visual convergence within
the news media. Are the design similarities among media a coincidence that
happened suddenly and without warning? Is CNN Headline News’s 2002
modular screen design that brings viewers ‘more news at a glance’ simply a
haphazard attempt to increase ratings in the advertiser-friendly 25 to
35-year-old demographic? (Associated Press Online, 2001: par. 3) Have
news websites followed a visual evolutionary path similar to newspaper
layout due to advances in technology? According to new media theorists,
visual similarities are not random happenstance; instead, they emerge from a
dynamic media environment that is shaped by technological, social, and
cultural forces (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Manovich, 2001). Yet, no studies
exist that examine how specific designs form and migrate across media over
time. This article aims to fill this research gap by exploring the evolution of
structural and graphic presentation trends of five major newspapers, seven
network and cable television news programs, and twelve news websites over
a forty-year period. The news was chosen as a genre for longitudinal visual
analysis because of its existence and archival availability in three visual
media, and because the news is a public commodity. As such, design
changes are usually planned so as to maximize the functionality and aesthetic
appeal of the product for consumption in a competitive marketplace. This
study also contributes to longitudinal research regarding the news media (see
Barnhurst, 1994, 2001; Barnhurst and Nerone, 1991; Barnhurst and Steele,
1997; Foote and Saunders, 1990; Lester, 1989).
LITERATURE REVIEW
In focusing on the evolution of the visual as it has been connected to
media, technology, and society, this study builds on critical and cultural
studies approaches to the news. Analysis of how newspapers sustain and
transform ideology reveal the complex cultural cues that are embedded in
photographic content and placement (Emery et al., 1996; Huxford, 2001;
Schudson, 1978). Similarly, studies that focus on the complex ways
television news programs portray ideologically-charged issues through visual
representation expose biases in news reporting (Ellis, 1992; Fiske, 1991;
Hallin, 1994; Reeves and Campbell, 1994). Studies of audience receptivity
to television news coverage of people and events explore the public
perception of the visual (Brosius et al., 1996; Domke et al., 2002; Graber,
1990; Grimes and Dreschel, 1996). Audience-centered studies of news
websites reveal user navigation and reading patterns in online environments
(Ferguson and Perse, 2000; Lewenstein et al., 2000; Mings, 1997; Sundar,
2000; van Oostendorp and van Nimwegen, 1998). Situating the visual
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New Media & Society 7(1)
within its broader cultural context underscores the point that the news
media are influenced by culture and society.
Historical accounts of the news media generally make only passing
references to design. Newspaper industry accounts tend to provide
information about technological innovations that have had an impact on
design (Brucker, 1937; Mott, 1941). Similarly, historical accounts of
television news programs typically chronicle the impact advances in
broadcast and production technology have had on the evolution of the news
(Barnouw, 1990; Boddy, 1990; Comstock, 1989). Such histories help
temper cultural and critical analysis of the news by reminding us of the
industry constraints under which the news operates. Since the internet is a
relatively new medium, research that addresses the visual progression of news
websites is just starting to emerge within academic literature (Boczkowski,
1999; Nerone and Barnhurst, 2001). Instead, news website research that
specifically addresses the visual aspect of communication primarily charts the
frequency and type of graphic (Li, 1998; Peng et al., 1998), or compares
visual content and design across multiple news media outlets (ChanOlmstead and Park, 2000; Kiernan and Levy, 1999; Lin and Jeffres, 2001;
Neuberger et al., 1998).
Discussions of news design aimed at practitioners and educators also
provide insight into the rationale behind trends in newspaper design (Allen,
1940, 1947; Arnold, 1969; Garcia, 1987; Hutt, 1973; Moen, 1989),
television news programs (Blank and Garcia, 1986; Levin and Watkins, 2002;
Merritt, 1987; Zettl, 1990), and website design (Nielsen, 2000; Siegel,
1997; Veen, 2001).
In addition to contributing to research that explores the visual dimension
of the news, this study also adds to a growing body of convergence research.
Dating back to the early 1980s (see Bagdikian, 2000; Companie and
Gomery, 2000; Pavlik and Dennis, 1993) research on convergence typically
falls into one of three areas: economic, technology/production, or cultural/
visual.
Economic convergence is considered to be the consolidation of media
outlets by conglomerates. Convergence, in this case, results because media
are bound together by the economic, political, and social parameters of their
existence. In a competitive marketplace, Roger Fidler (1997) contends,
media outlets must continually ‘evolve and adapt’ in response to the
emergence of new communication media because, as he puts it, their only
other option is ‘to die’ (p. 23). For instance, newspaper publishers became
early owners of radio stations in order to keep a foothold in the changing
media environment. More recently, the acquisition of America Online
(AOL) by TimeWarner in 2000 demonstrates how existing media enterprises
adapt to the introduction of a new communication medium by acquiring an
outlet in this medium. Convergence of this type, critics argue, decreases
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Cooke: Visual convergence
competition and creates a homogenous media landscape where the same
information is funneled through a conglomerate’s different media outlets
(Gitlin, 1993, 1996; Herman and Chomsky, 1988; Miller, 1997; Price and
Weinberg, 1996; Schiller, 1996).
Technology/Production convergence typically refers either to the merging
of two or more media technologies or the sharing of information through
digitization. In the case of the former, WebTV, for instance, combines
internet access and interactivity with broadcast, cable, and/or satellite
television into one appliance. As researchers note, the blending of
technologies in the creation of a hybrid product frequently requires a
merging of markets, services, and industries (Baldwin et al., 1996; Nilsson et
al., 2001; Pavlik, 1998; Thielmann and Dowling, 1999). Within the news
media, digital technology allows for the editing and formatting of
information from a single content source for multiple media outlets (Palmer
and Eriksen, 1999; Pavlik, 1998). Digitized video footage of an event, for
instance, can simultaneously be available to the public on television as video
feed, on a news website through streaming video, and on the newspaper
front page as edited stills. Not surprisingly, a convergence of production
methods and technologies frequently results in an economic convergence as
well.
The 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 other media. This is significant
because a single communication style is no longer predicated on a specific
medium. That is, the pictorial mode of communication that has been
associated with television news appears in the information graphics of a
newspaper front page and in the thumbnail-sized icons on a news website.
Similarly, the ticker-tape delivery style that was made popular by news
websites is now a standard feature of many cable news programs.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The convergence of visual styles among print, television, and the internet is
rooted in a context that has historically facilitated interaction between
media. According to media critics, the visual display of ‘new media’ such as
the internet and television must be understood in relation to their media
predecessors because they draw on the design conventions of these media as
they evolve. Lev Manovich (2001) contends that the study of new media
must be grounded in the past and present study of the arts, computer
technology, popular culture, and information design as they relate to the
visual, because all are interconnected through our society (p. 13). Similarly,
through a process by which Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999)
term ‘remediation,’ new media emerge and develop a presentation style
through their relationship to visual cultural artifacts and processes.
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New Media & Society 7(1)
Digital visual media can best be understood through the ways in which they
honor, rival, and revise linear-perspective painting, photography, film,
television, and print. No medium today . . . seems to do its work in cultural
isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media
comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the
ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of
new media. (p. 15)
Drawing upon established visual strategies of older media by newer media
illustrates the complex dynamic relationship that exists between media.
Although Manovich and Bolter and Grusin make similar observations
about the aesthetic evolution of new media by moving the discussion of
new media developments away from a linear technological deterministic
perspective, they differ in their theoretical approaches to the subject. The
visual language that Manovich develops ‘from the ground up’ is not a direct
application of an existing literary or cultural theory (as was initially the case
in the analysis of television programs), nor is it a fully formed theory.
Instead, it is a set of principles – modularity, automation, variability, and
transcoding – that comprise ‘the identity’ or ‘language’ of new media
(Manovich, 2001: 10). These principles offer researchers a way of
differentiating new media from older media, while acknowledging the visual
give-and-take that exists between media.
Bolter and Grusin, by contrast, put forth remediation as a theoretical
framework for understanding the process by which new and older media
visually influence one another. Remediation operates under the ‘double
logic’ of two styles of visual representation: immediacy (the goal of which is
to make the viewer forget the presence of the medium) and hypermediacy
(the goal of which is to remind the viewer of the medium). Currently, the
logic of immediacy is being played out on the televised football field, with
camera angles that attempt to immerse viewers in the action of the game by
simulating the first-person point-of-view (also characteristic of video games).
Hypermediacy, on the other hand, can be seen in the ‘mixing and
matching’ of media styles on a single television screen – video streams, splitscreen displays, graphics, and text, all of which call attention to television as
a medium (Bolter and Grusin, 1999: 6).
The distinction between how Manovich and Bolter and Grusin approach
the study of new media is worth noting because it demonstrates that, unlike
literary criticism or communication theory, methods for understanding and
studying new media are still in the process of being defined. This article
follows the historical approaches taken by these researchers by exploring the
ongoing visual interaction that has occurred between newspapers, television
news programs, and news websites that has ultimately resulted in a visual
convergence of media within this genre. Like Manovich and Bolter and
Grusin, a primary goal of this study is to provide a historical context for
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Cooke: Visual convergence
understanding this phenomenon before it ‘slips into invisibility’ (Manovich,
2001: 8). This study of convergence also fulfills a need in mass
communication by taking a ‘holistic approach’ to understanding the media as
advocated by James Halloran (1998).
Ideally the media should be seen not in isolation, but as one set of social
institutions, interacting with other institutions within the wider social
system. . . . The media do not do their work in isolation, but in and through a
nexus of mediating factors. What any medium can do on its own is probably
quite limited. (p. 19)
Halloran further notes that studying the media from a broad perspective is
inherently a complex undertaking because relationships between media
themselves are complicated. Study of the media from this perspective, then,
does not necessarily lend itself well to the standard quantitative and
qualitative methodologies usually associated with mass communication
research. The next section discusses the news sources included in this study
and the methodology used to analyze the visual dimension of these news
sources.
NEWS SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
This study charts the visual trajectory of five nationally recognized
newspapers, seven television network and cable news programs, and twelve
reputable news websites during the past 40 years. In total, 188 newspaper
front pages, 228 news programs, and 80 news website home pages were
analyzed for this study.
Newspapers
The following newspapers were included in this study: The New York Times,
The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and USA Today.
These newspapers were chosen because they reflect a range of design styles
and are large publications that geographically span the US. With the
exception of USA Today (which first hit newsstands in 1982), the front page
of each newspaper was collected on the same day from each year beginning
in 1960 and ending in 2002. From this population, a purposive sample was
composed (Patton, 1990). Saturdays and Sundays were excluded to ensure
sampling consistency across media. The front page was selected for study as a
way of limiting the sample scope and because, as newspaper design
consultant Mario Garcia (1993) has noted, it establishes the overall look and
feel of a newspaper (p. 9).
Television news programs
The following network and cable television news programs were included in
this study (start dates are indicated in parentheses): ABC World News Tonight
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New Media & Society 7(1)
(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 network evening news programs were
selected because of their availability through the Vanderbilt University
Television News Archives, the sole repository of archived television news
programs. The cable television news programs, CNN World View, CNN
Headline News, MSNBC Newsfront, and CNBC MarketWrap were also
included in this study based on availability. Since the visual presentation of
television news programs changes more often than newspaper front page
design, each television news program was viewed twice a year: one weekday
selected from January 1 through June 30, and one weekday from July 1
through December 31 (Riffe et al., 1996). From these programs, a
purposive sample was formed. Since these news programs do not air on
Saturdays or Sundays, weekends were excluded from the sample.
News websites
The following stand alone, newspaper-affiliated, and television newsaffiliated websites were included in this study:
• Stand alone sites: Salon.com and TheStreet.com
• Newspaper affiliates: USAToday.com, NYT.com,
ChicagoTribune.com, Boston.com/globe, and Latimes.com
• Television news affiliates: ABCnews.go.com, CBSnews.cbs.com,
MSNBC.com/news/nightly, CNN.com, and MSNBC.com/news
The home page of each website was selected for analysis because, like the
newspaper front page, it serves as the window through which the public
accesses the news source’s inner contents (Ha and James, 1998). These
specific news websites were selected for their longevity and because they
represent a range of affiliations. Unlike newspapers and television news
programs, there is no comprehensive archive of news websites. In addition,
the irregular holdings and content of the public web archive, the WayBack
Machine (www.web.archive.org/collections/web.html), resulted in a
purposive sample that was largely based on availability. News website home
pages included for analysis were selected according to their completeness (all
textual and pictorial elements). To maintain sampling consistency across
media, home pages from Saturdays and Sundays were not included in the
sample.
Design elements and visual trends
This study followed a methodological approach used by John Nerone and
Kevin Barnhurst (1995) in their study of the modern design ‘shift’ in five
newspapers that occurred from 1920 to 1940 (p. 9). To identify trends that
have formed a visual convergence of these media, design elements that have
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Cooke: Visual convergence
contributed to an increasingly visual mode of presentation were identified
and tracked over time. Since no term from mass media currently exists to
characterize this presentation mode, it is referred to as scannable design
throughout this study. This phrase is derived from audience-centered
research conducted within technical communication to describe page/screen
designs where information is visually structured to improve reader
accessibility (Redish, 1993; Schriver, 1997). Spatial cues that group related
items together, for instance, are characteristic of scannable design because
they enable the eye to quickly grasp the relationship between items.
The specific design elements that comprise scannable design are derived
from those used in studies of the visual design of newspapers (Barnhurst,
1994: 186; Barnhurst and Nerone, 1991: 798; Utt and Pasternack, 1989:
623) television news programs (Foote and Saunders, 1990: 503), and news
websites (Li, 1998: 358). These elements have been defined and organized
according to the following two categories:
• Structure. The layout of information on the page/screen –
including: grids, white space, and modular design – that form a
visual framework.
• Graphics. The pictorial representation of information, including:
photographs, charts, maps, illustrations, information graphics,
composite graphics, and animated sequences.
Since this was a longitudinal study with an emphasis on identifying and
tracking how these elements have changed over the years, the intent was not
to chart the frequency of these design elements. Such a method of analysis
would provide little insight into the evolution of the page/screen as a
whole. That is, tracking the number of photographs that appeared on
newspaper front pages would not necessarily reveal information about their
placement or purpose, details that are important for understanding how a
medium defines its visual style in relation to other media.
In the subsequent sections, specific visual trends within newspapers,
television news programs, and news websites that have been building to the
point of a visual convergence are discussed in relation to their media
context. The analysis is chronologically organized and begins in 1960 with a
discussion of newspaper design.
STRUCTURAL AND GRAPHIC TRENDS: MOVING
TOWARDS A VISUAL CONVERGENCE
Although changes in television news programs have frequently paralleled
advances in production technology, changes in newspaper design and layout
frequently come about as the result of ‘a complex dialogue with prevailing
culture’ (Barnhurst 1994: 166). In fact, several longitudinal studies of
newspaper design have revealed that visual trends tend to develop slowly and
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New Media & Society 7(1)
are influenced by numerous factors: movements in art, the professional
treatment of design by magazines and advertising, and the competitive
marketplace (Barnhurst, 1994, 2001; Nerone and Barnhurst, 1991). Several
newspapers during the 1930s, for instance, shifted from a ‘crowded, chaotic’
page design to a ‘streamlined, hierarchical look’ that was brought about by ‘a
new professional authority of journalists and designers’ influenced by
modernist design (Nerone and Barnhurst, 1995: 9). The streamlined look
emphasized readability through orderly design – strong banner headlines,
illustrations, and items of equal visual weight balanced on either side of the
page. Although it made aesthetic sense, many newspaper editors were
resistant to the design because its advocate John Allen had ‘proposed no less
than a revolution, overturning all that had gone before’ (Barnhurst, 1994:
177). As a result, many editors generally paid little attention to the layout of
the front page, preferring instead to fill the screen with textual evidence of
the journalistic power to gather information.
According to the findings of this study, newspaper front page design in
the 1960s was structurally similar across publications. With the exception of
The New York Times, newspapers featured a streamlined layout popular in
previous decades. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, shifted from an eightcolumn to a six-column design, increased the gutter size, and created a
hierarchy of information through typeface standardization (see Figure 1).
Information, however, remained tightly packed on the front page. This study
also found that the shift to a ‘spacious layout’ in newspaper design that
Barnhurst (1994) asserts occurred during the 1960s did not happen until the
mid-1970s, when additional white space visually opened up the front page.
Television news programs of the early 1970s also featured minimal
onscreen white space, with filmed footage and large, crude graphics (see
Figure 2) as the dominant visual modes of communication. As precursors to
composite graphics, which fused text and pictures together into a single
visual unit by capturing the essence of a news story, these large graphics
foreshadowed a visual trend towards scannable design through pictorial
representation.
1970s: spacious layout and composite graphics
During the 1970s, structural changes in newspaper front page layout and
television news program presentation evolved in ways that characterized
scannable design. On the newspaper page and on the television screen,
grids, modular design, and purposeful white space served as structural
devices that visually organized textual and pictorial information. The 1978
front page of the Boston Globe (see Figure 3), for instance, demonstrated the
shift in design from the column (or grid) structure of previous decades to
modular design. In contrast to the front page design newspapers of the
1960s, the ‘spacious’ layout of the 1970s more clearly grouped related
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 1 The front page from a 1969 edition of The Los Angeles Times illustrates the
streamlined look of newspapers during the late 1960s and early 1970s (2 May
1969). Copyright, 1969, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with permission.
• Figure 2 The structure of information on television news programs was of little journalistic
importance, as producers filled the television screen with video or scrolling
graphics (ABC World News Tonight, 16 March 1972). Reprinted courtesy of ABC
News.
information together. This design created distinct focal points for readers,
thereby improving the scannable functionality of the front page. As
newspaper designer and researcher Mario Garcia (1987) noted, by the early
1970s, ‘modular design had become a dominant visual element in American
newspapers’ (p. 46).
Photographs were the primary graphic element to appear on the front
page during this decade. Not surprisingly, newspaper practitioners have
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New Media & Society 7(1)
• Figure 3 Starting in the mid-1970s, modular design created a more scannable newspaper
by grouping photographs and textual information in horizontal and vertical
modules. (Reprinted courtesy of The Boston Globe: Page one of The Boston
Evening Globe, 4 April 1978.)
labeled television as ‘a major force affecting newspaper visuals’ during the
1970s (Finburg and Itule, 1990: 5). Garcia (1987) has further commented on
the fact that the visual nature of television as a medium contributed to a
shift in newspaper design.
With the 1970s came greater awareness of graphics among newspaper readers –
most of whom [were] also avid television viewers – and the need for those in
charge of publishing to produce more graphically appealing pages. . . . By the
mid-1970s, newspapers everywhere had given new meaning to the familiar word
‘style.’ (p. 3)
Packaging the news, the very thing John Allen advocated over 30 years ago
through streamlined design, was recognized as an important aspect of print
journalism as control over layout and design shifted from text-oriented
editors to specialists educated in the visual presentation of information.
During this decade, changes in the ways information was structured on
television news programs also reflected a shift towards scannable design
across media. In the early 1970s, television news programs gravitated towards
modular design as a structural device for previewing and summarizing the
top news stories of the day (see Figure 4). This presentation style increased
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 4 Summarizing the day’s top news stories, ABC World News Tonight presented
information to viewers orally and visually through modular design (16 March
1972). Reprinted courtesy of ABC News.
• Figure 5 The television screen also “opened up” during the 1970s as news programs
moved from full-screen graphics to smaller text-and-picture composite graphics
(ABC World News Tonight, 3 April 1978). Reprinted courtesy of ABC News.
scannability by allowing viewers who had tuned in mid-program to quickly
get up to speed with the broadcast.
News programs also featured small composite graphics, which were
framed and positioned to the side of the anchor (see Figure 5). As Blank
and Garcia have noted (1986), composite graphics ‘exist to enhance content,
to present a clearer picture of a message, to lure the viewer who may be
watching but not listening, and to clarify meaning’ (p. 22). Such text-andpicture graphics increased the scannability of news programs by visually
summing up the essence of a news story for viewers.
Throughout the 1970s changes in newspaper layout and television news
program presentation reflected an audience awareness and a responsiveness to
the media context. The next section examines how structural and graphic
design elements designed to facilitate scannability continued throughout the
1980s.
1980s: information acceleration through design
During the 1980s, structural and graphic elements of newspapers and
television news programs escalated the visual delivery of information. This
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New Media & Society 7(1)
• Figure 6 USA Today’s “scan-and-go” presentation style characterized newspaper design
during the 1980s (1–3 April 1988). Copyright, 1988, USA Today. Reprinted with
permission.
was partly in response to a culture characterized by information acceleration.
On television news programs, rapid-fire editing and the shrinking sound
bite – down from 43 seconds in 1968 to nine seconds in 1988 (Hallin,
1992) – increased the pace at which information was delivered. On
newspaper front pages, information filled the front page, and news summary
story descriptions decreased from several sentence introductions to brief,
one-sentence teasers. In the 1980s, scannable design, as illustrated by USA
Today (see Figure 6), was characterized by a presentation style that created
more ‘points-of-entry’ off of the front page and enabled readers to quickly
move to specific items of interest located within the newspaper.
Information graphics were also popular as a visual element during this
decade. Serving a purpose similar to the composite graphics used on
television news programs, information graphics provide the essence of a
news story through a combination of text and pictures (see Figure 7). As
Edward Tufte (1997) has pointed out, well-designed information graphics are
effective as scannable devices because they allow the reader ‘to control the
order and pace of the flow of information’ (p. 145). Information graphics
also make information more visually accessible than when it is presented in
text-only format, because the graphic embellishment visually sets words and
numbers apart from the surrounding text.
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 7 A typical information graphic (USA Today, 1–3 April 1988). Copyright, 1988, USA
Today. Reprinted with permission.
During this time, the presentation style of television news programs also
substantially changed, primarily because of advances in production
technology and increased competition in broadcast marketplace. Cable
television, introduced into homes in the 1970s, had grown from
approximately 4000 to more than 15 million homes by 1980 (Barnouw,
1990: 494). This meant that in some markets, network news programs had
to compete with up to 100 different programs – including the Cable News
Network (CNN), a 24 hour news network started by Ted Turner in 1980.
As media scholar John Thorton Caldwell (1995) noted, CNN has influenced
the presentation style of network news programs.
CNN demonstrated the pervasive possibilities of videographic presentation.
Starting in 1980 – and without any apparent or overt aesthetic agenda – CNN
created and celebrated a consciousness of the televisual apparatus; an
appreciation for multiple electronic feeds, image-text combinations,
videographics, and studios with banks of monitors that evoked video
installations. Ted Turner had co-authored the kind of cyberspace that videofreaks and visionaries had only fantasized about in the late 1960s. (p. 13)
The ‘command center’ look, Stuart Ewen (1988) remarked, ‘offer[ed] an
imagistic sense of being “plugged-in”’ to the world (p. 264), as illustrated by
a screen shot from a the opening sequence of a 1982 ABC World News
Tonight broadcast (see Figure 8). As with the newspaper design trend of
increasing the points-of-entry on the front page, this presentation style was
scannable because the multiple video monitors and busy newsroom
backdrop created more onscreen action and focal points for viewers. And, as
this study demonstrates, this trend has escalated in subsequent decades.
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New Media & Society 7(1)
• Figure 8 The ‘command center’ look popular with news programs during the 1980s (ABC
World News Tonight, 7 January 1982). Reprinted courtesy of ABC News.
Accompanying this command center look was a phenomenon Caldwell
(1995) termed ‘videographic televisuality,’ a presentation style that was
characterized by ‘eye-popping visuals’ and ‘technological flourishes’ (p. 134).
On television news programs, animated graphic displays evidenced this
trend, as illustrated by two sequential screen shots from a 1985 ABC World
News Tonight story about an arms smuggling controversy (see Figure
9).Visual effects such as this created on-screen action to visually static news
stories. Not surprisingly, trends in newspaper design and layout during the
next decade further accelerate information delivery through design.
• Figure 9 Animated sequences helped to move an otherwise visually deficient news story
forward (ABC World News Tonight, 12 February 1985). Reprinted courtesy of ABC
News.
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 10 The three-panel layout continues to be the preferred structure for news web
sites (ABCNews.com, 8 May 1997). Reprinted courtesy of ABC News.
1990–2002: the internet joins the media mix
Throughout the 1990s, the cultural phenomenon of information
acceleration continued to be reflected in news media presentation. The
addition of the internet as an information medium also presented news
organizations with a new distribution source. While the internet gained
popularity with the public, television news programs, newspapers, and
independent news organizations developed an internet presence, in part, by
borrowing from visual trends in existing media. This section describes three
relevant stages of web design and then discusses the structural and graphic
trends that have formed across media to create a visual convergence.
The first stage of news website design was primarily characterized by
what web designer Jeffrey Veen (2001) has termed the ‘three-panel layout.’
This layout, as illustrated in the 1997 home page of ABCNews.com (see
Figure 10), consisted of a top identifier panel, a left navigation panel, and a
right content panel. This structure reflected a media context because the left
and top panels refashioned the newspaper front page.
The second stage in news website design extended the newspaper front
page metaphor by providing computer users with more points of entry into
the site’s inner content through adaptation of the news summary feature. As
demonstrated in the 1998 home page of TheStreet.com (see Figure 11),
headlines with brief textual descriptions enabled computer users to scan the
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New Media & Society 7(1)
• Figure 11 An example of news web site design during the second stage of evolution
(TheStreet.com, 28 June 1998). Reprinted with permission. © 1998
TheStreet.com. All rights reserved.
top news stories of the day and click on items of interest for more
information. While this format presented users with more information on a
single page, it also required quite a bit of vertical scrolling. TheStreet.com’s
home page, for instance, has been cropped for the sake of space. The actual
page was nearly five times longer because, unlike the newspaper broadsheet
or the television screen, the internet offered the potential of unlimited
vertical space. This was a problem that the next generation of news websites
addressed through modular design.
Before moving on, it is worth noting that the trend of graphic
representation through thumbnail-sized images, such as the icons that
accompanied each news story on TheStreet.com’s home page, were
characteristic of not only news websites but also of newspapers during this
time. The front page from a 1999 Chicago Tribune (see Figure 12), for
instance, illustrated how newspapers incorporated these graphics. As with
the composite graphics of television news programs, such graphic
representations visually captured the essence of a news story at a glance. This
word-plus-graphic trend was also effective at catering to both imageoriented and textually-oriented readers scanning for information.
The third stage in news website design featured information modules,
reminiscent of the modular design that characterized newspaper layout
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 12 During the late 1990s, newspapers increased the number of thumbnail-sized
images and icons on the front page. Copyrighted 22 February 1999, Chicago
Tribune Company. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
during the 1970s. This shift in design followed the same visual trajectory
of newspaper front page structure in the 1980s as the number of the
points-of-entry off of the home page were increased through a portal
presentation style. The redesign of ABCNews.com’s home page in 2001
(see Figure 13) demonstrates how white space, banners, and color visually
departmentalized information. This new design increased the functionality
of the screen by increasing the scannable quality of information presented
on the home page.
The modular presentation style also crossed media boundaries as television
news programs have attempted to capture the ‘up-to-the-minute’ status of
the internet as a medium. A 2001 screen shot from the now defunct CNBC
financial news program, MarketWrap (see Figure 14) for instance,
demonstrates this highly segmented or ‘hypermediated’ structure. Similar to
the ways in which information has been departmentalized on news website
home pages and newspaper front pages, the television screen has been
divided into three primary segments: the bottom scrolling ticker tape panel;
the right Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P updates panel; and the remaining
content panel which, in this case, features the anchor and a composite
graphic.
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New Media & Society 7(1)
• Figure 13 Information modules eliminated cumbersome scrolling by departmentalizing
information in a smaller space (ABCNews.com, 6 April 2001). Reprinted courtesy
of ABC News.
• Figure 14 Information modules created continual onscreen motion, a visual tactic designed
to keep viewers tuned into the broadcast (CNBC, Market Wrap, 2 October 2001).
Reprinted courtesy of CNBC.
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Cooke: Visual convergence
• Figure 15 The modular layout of CNN Headlines News gives television the look and feel of
the web (28 January 2002). (CNN/Getty Images)
CNN Headline News adopted a similar format in the 2002 redesign of
their presentation style (see Figure 15). Although the format has been
criticized by journalists, who have said that it looks like ‘an alarmingly
jumbled internet news site, except with smoother running video and no
place to put your mouse’ (Johnson, 2001, para. 5), the design has been
popular with the public, who are said to appreciate the ‘more news at a
glance’ approach (Associated Press Online, 2001, para. 3). As with CNBC’s
Market Wrap, the screen of Headline News has been divided into three large
information panels: the bottom headline, weather, and sportswatch
information, the left supplemental text/composite graphic panel, and the
anchor/video footage content panel. And, like newspaper front pages and
news website home pages, the structure encourages viewer scanning of the
screen. The information module structure – characteristic of news design in
print, television, and the internet – demonstrates a point of visual
convergence among media.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
This article has highlighted the paths print, television, and the internet have
taken towards a visual convergence via an analysis of the news media.
Beginning in the 1970s with a shift in newspaper design to a spacious
modular layout and the addition of composite graphics to television news
programs, structural and graphic elements that contribute to scannable
design have evolved throughout the decades. As the pace of everyday life
increased during the 1980s, so did the visual delivery of information
through a scan-and-go newspaper front page design and through a
videographic presentation style that characterized television news programs.
With widespread public access to the internet in the 1990s and a culture of
information acceleration, a highly-scannable information module
presentation style developed across media.
This article has also revealed the visual connections between media in
relation to emerging new media theories and has examined an aspect of
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New Media & Society 7(1)
convergence that has not yet been explored in a systematic way. That is, it
has sought to understand how Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation
and Manovich’s new media language function through investigation of the
visual give-and-take that occurs between media over time. The mixing and
matching of structural and graphic elements across media that create
scannable design demonstrates how ‘cultural techniques, conventions, forms,
and concepts’ merge within a social space in the creation of interfaces that
transcend traditional media boundaries (Manovich, 2001: 333).
This study also calls to attention issues that challenge interdisciplinary
research. First, the very essence of convergence is about the blurring of
boundaries – technological, economic, and, in this case, disciplinary. By its
very nature, research regarding convergence requires that scholars step
outside of the comfort zone of their immediate discipline to explore
research in other fields. Theories for exploring new media, for example,
need not be limited to study of the internet; instead, they can provide a
new perspective for studying established, ‘traditional’ media. Similarly, a
phenomenon such as convergence that spans disciplinary boundaries
provides an opportunity for mass media researchers to learn from the diverse
fields of social sciences, visual communication, information science, and
economics. However, a challenge in addressing such an interdisciplinary
occurrence is a lack of methods for studying phenomenon. This fact
reinforces Boczkowski’s (1999) point that ‘cross-disciplinary frameworks’ are
needed to ‘account for an object of study so complex that it blurs the
boundaries that separate different social sciences fields’ (p. 117). While
established methodologies such as content analysis and rhetorical analysis
work well within media studies for charting the frequency of words, phrases,
or pictures, or highlighting themes or reporting biases, there is certainly
room for the development of new methodologies that facilitate
interdisciplinary study.
Finally, this suggests several potential avenues of future research regarding
convergence of the media. For instance, what does a visual convergence
mean for future design trends in print, television, and the internet? To what
extent are economic factors a contributor to a visual convergence of the
media? What do professionals within the news media view as the motivating
factors of design change? Are there technological limitations that prohibit a
continued convergence? What are audience perceptions and attitudes towards
this phenomenon? Are there some designs that work better across media
than other designs? Has the move toward scannable design actually increased
the rate at which people can access information of personal interest?
Exploration of the issues raised by these questions can contribute to a better
understanding of the convergence as a multifaceted, constantly evolving
phenomenon.
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Cooke: Visual convergence
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Alan Nadel, James Zappen,
Lee Odell, Langdon Winner, and Joe Downing. I would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous version of this article. This
research would not have been possible without financial support from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute’s Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, and
the University of North Texas’s Research and Grants Office.
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LYNNE COOKE is an assistant professor of Technical Communication at the University of
North Texas where she conducts eye tracking research that addresses usability issues in
information design. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly.
Address: Department of English, University of North Texas, PO Box 311307, Denton, TX
76203–1307, USA. [email: [email protected]]
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