Teens prefer free news and aggregation websites

Washington, Apr 12 (ANI): A newspaper study has revealed that teenagers think that news is a free commodity and they love aggregation sites.

The findings may acts as a bad news for online newspapers as two of the big industry ideas right now are-charge for content, and put the aggregators out of business.

"Not only are teens not rushing to pay for content, but they also struggle to envision in what realm they would need to pay for content," Wired News quoted the study as stating.

Conducted for the NAA by Northwestern University's Media Management Center, the study claimed that teenagers are less interested in news brands than a site's usability and depth of content.

The study said: "Ask teens where they find news, and they typically say Yahoo!, Google, AOL or MSN. Sometimes, they mean Yahoo! and other times they mean Yahoo! News; sometimes they mean Google, the search bar, and other times they mean Google News or iGoogle. And sometimes they say MSN but mean MSNBC.com.

"Whichever option they choose, it's clear that they believe such aggregators, portals and search engines serve them well. They like their brevity and compact approach."

The study detailed how the kids today want their news to be packaged online.

The teenagers want the news providers to reduce the volume of information and craved a "top headlines" approach and "a simplified overview of the news they often find at Yahoo, Google, AOL and their e-mail providers."

It should provide "an adequate sense of the news" on its own. News providers should include a brief summary with each headline, which should preferably be comprised in a single sentence.Get rid of clutter, like little video boxes, small ads and tabs.

Although visuals should be included with anything that matters, but photo galleries are no substitute for a story for today's teens.

The study said: "They want you to take a stand on which stories of the day are most important and to convey what you've decided.

"Web usability has long emphasized limiting the number of clicks to reach information, but the degree to which teens want to avoid clicking it noteworthy."

Teenagers think that the information should be broken up into management chunks, and categories should be limited on the home page and interrupted text should be on story pages. (ANI)