Journalism Studies, Volume 4, Number 3, 2003, pp.

401414

Hyperlinking as Gatekeeping: online newspaper coverage of the execution of an American terrorist

DANIELA V. DIMITROVA Iowa State University, USA COLLEEN CONNOLLY-AHERN, ANDREW PAUL WILLIAMS, LYNDA LEE KAID and AMANDA REID University of Florida, USA

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the online coverage of American terrorist Timothy McVeighs execution on the websites of the top 15 print newspapers cited by Columbia Journalism Review as the Best American Newspapers. Using content analysis, the study compares the 15 newspapers websites by measuring the number, destination, and characteristics of hyperlinks that accompany these stories. The results suggest that online newspapers use hyperlinks as a gatekeeping device because they are unlikely to offer external hyperlinks. The study also shows that online newspapers are not taking advantage of multimedia and interactivity on the Web. KEY WORDS: Online Newspapers, Gatekeeping, Hyperlinks, Web Publishing

Introduction Terrorism is, on the one hand, profoundly national in nature, because it is an act aimed at an entire country, its people, and its values. On the other hand, it is also a local event, touching individuals and the communities that must deal directly with the aftermath of terrorist acts. On June 11, 2001, the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh marked the culmination of the six-year saga following the Oklahoma City bombing and the closing act of, what was then, the most horric act of terrorism on American soil. Tragically, exactly three months later, on September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon eclipsed the national impact of the Oklahoma City bombing. The execution of Timothy McVeigh as a terrorist, however, remains a turning point in US history. McVeighs execution was the rst federal execution in the United States in 38 years and was of broad public interest due to the dramatic nature of the story, reaction of victims families, and the ongoing controversy over administration of the death penalty. This major news event unfolded in four phases: rst, the

bombing on April 19, 1995; second, the trial and sentencing; third, the FBI scandal over the missing les; and fourth, McVeighs execution. This study focuses on the last phaseonline coverage of the execution, a major, preplanned public event. This research assesses the amount of Internet news coverage allotted to the execution of Timothy McVeigh on the websites of the top 15 newspapers cited by Columbia Journalism Review as the Best American Newspapers. Using content analysis, the study examines and compares the 15 newspapers websites, determining the extent of their coverage of the McVeigh execution by measuring the number and length of the stories as well as the number and type of hyperlinks that accompany these stories. The study specically addresses whether the subject links that accompany these stories were internal or external to these newspapers websites. Some purported advantages of online newspapers, as compared with the traditional print versions, are the advantage of unlimited space this new technology offers and the ability to provide users with more in-depth coverage and data on issues and events. While Web news stories certainly resemble those in

ISSN 1461-670X print/ISSN 1469-9699 online/03/030401-14 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1461670032000099741

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their print counterparts, the Internet medium expands the possibilities for news delivery. Online news stories consist not only of the information gathered by reporters or called from the Associated Press (AP) wire, but also of the hyperlinks that Web reporters add to direct readers to additional sources of information. The decision about which hyperlinks to include in Web news stories and which not to include constitutes an additional gatekeeping decision made by Web news editors. Thus, this study seeks to measure how Web newspapers function in their gatekeeping role online while covering a major public event. Gatekeeping and Hyperlinking: a literature review Gatekeeping Gatekeeping theory has informed the study of journalism for more than 50 years. David Manning White introduced the world to Mr. Gates, the pseudonymous newspaper wire editor, in 1950 (White, 1950). Since that time, numerous communications researchers have employed gatekeeping studies to describe the way in which news decisions are made in a variety of media and by a variety of different stakeholders, from editors to reporters. Gatekeeping is the process by which the vast array of potential news messages are winnowed, shaped, and prodded into those few that are actually transmitted by the news media (Shoemaker et al., 2001). The theory applies to both interpersonal and mass communications, and involves every aspect of message handling, selection and control (Shoemaker, 1991). Broadly, in the eld of mass communications, anyone who decides whether or not information is presented to the public is a gatekeeper. The original gatekeeping study found that Mr. Gates news decisions were highly subjective, with about one-third of news rejected based on his personal feelings about the importance of the content and the other twothirds rejected because there was insufcient space for the story, or a similar story had run recently (White, 1950, p. 386). In all, Mr. Gates rejected about 90 percent of wire service copy

(White, 1950). The results did not change when Snider repeated the study with the self-same Mr. Gates 17 years later (Snider, 1967). Given the high level of subjectivity indicated by early gatekeeping case studies, it may appear that the biases of a relatively small number of individuals could seriously change the way news users interpret the world around them. However, subsequent studies indicate that gatekeeping is actually a complex process, and that the biases of individual gatekeepers are mitigated by a number of factors. Dimmick, using the principle of uncertainty reduction, indicated that editors and reporters create a model over time of what is news, in order to be sure that their news decisions are correct (Dimmick, 1974). Some practices that reduce uncertainty in making news decisions include: accepting the news denition of opinion leaders within a newsroom or on a particular beat; adopting of a group consensus through daily professional interaction; keying on output of a reference institution, such as the AP or The New York Times; accepting key sources denitions of news; and using attitudes and values from reference groups other than those in the newsroom. Shoemaker and Reese (1996) found that factors such as news value, objectivity and organizational structure serve as checks and balances on individual biases. These checks and balances may explain why news decisions across media are often quite similar, despite the widely different personalities involved in making them (Riffe et al., 1986). In one study, for example, two of the three major networks shared the same lead story more than 90 percent of the time (Foote and Steele, 1986). Gatekeeping may be as noticeable in its absence as in its presence. Shaw (1994) and Williams and Delli Carpini (2000) have linked irresponsible journalism, or tabloidism, to the decreasing importance of the role played by gatekeepers in both print and television newsrooms. Initial gatekeeping studies focused on newspaper newsrooms, but the theory has been used to describe news decisions in other media, especially television (Berkowitz, 1990; Carroll, 1985; Gant and Dimmick, 2000). Gatekeeping is

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often used to analyze the way a specic topic is reported throughout a cross-section of media (DAlessio and Allen, 2000; Hallet and Cannella, 1994; Husselbee and Stempel, 1997). The Internet news media have only recently become the subject of gatekeeping research. Singer suggested a need for gatekeeping research on the interpretive role of online journalists, especially in light of the Internets virtually unlimited newshole (Singer, 1998). In a subsequent study of online versions of regional newspapers, she found that content was predominantly staff generated and that online newspapers did not take extensive advantage of their right to reproduce AP stories online (Singer, 2001). Singer (2001, p. 66) drew an analogy between gatekeeping and hyperlinking, suggesting the online newspapers represented an overwhelmingly local medium that were giving up a major portion of [their] traditional gatekeeping function, by sending their readers, via hyperlink, directly to the AP newswire website. Hyperlink Concept The use of hyperlinks in Web text developed as a way to enhance the availability of information and provide users with a convenient way to navigate through the vast amount of information provided on the World Wide Web. Hyperlinking allows a user to use a mouse or other pointing device to click on a word, phrase, or graphic image in order to jump to another piece of information or website. Kovarick touts this as an advantage of the Web: Linking to related sites is another strength of the Web and can help readers understand an issue in depth (Kovarick, 2002). Hyperlinks provide a way for users to follow their own interests when doing online searching and thus create an element of interactivity for the user (Peng et al., 1999). In a newspaper context, interactivity can take many forms, including opinion-sharing bulletin boards and real-time chat rooms. In addition to the potential for interactivity, hyperlinks can be important to Web users because they increase the users ability to control the information-seeking process. Eveland

and Dunwoody (2001) suggest that user control is an important factor in learning, and websites provide an opportunity for users to navigate or control information access. In fact, when Althaus and Tewksbury (2000) surveyed student subjects about their Internet usage, they found that Web news gave users a sense of control over their information seeking. In a study of the 1996 presidential debates, Jacques and Ratzan (1997) found that hyperlinking provided viewers with the ability to augment their understanding of the debates by providing more news and information, a result they substantiated by validating the large number of hits for sites available in the test project. Further evidence comes from an experimental study of newspaper story hyperlink usage that found that 99 percent of subjects said they wanted to have options of getting more information and that expanded abstracts were the favored approach (Vargo et al., 2000). From a theoretical viewpoint, hyperlinks may be effective because they are an exemplication of distinctiveness theory (Wallace, 1965) which posits the view that a visual stimulus that is either semantically or perceptually isolated from other stimuli in the visual eld can pop-up in the early stages of visual information processing (Heo et al., 2001). This theory suggests quite clearly that something that stands out from its background receives greater attention and may even be remembered more clearly (Beattie and Mitchell, 1985; Taylor and Wood, 1983). Applied to hyperlinks, distinctiveness theory would explain why a hyperlink stands out from other text on the screen. It may also help explain eye movement studies that found Web readers go rst to text on a page, then to photographs and graphics, and often move back and forth between news sites (Poynter Institute, Stanford Poynter Project, 2000). However, despite the advantages offered by hyperlinking, it is not clear that online newspapers take advantage of all of the potential offered. A survey of online newspapers that included a sample of national and local dailies found that while most newspapers provided links to their advertisers sites, less than half provided links to other news sites that could have enhanced information for their readers

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(Peng et al., 1999). The same project demonstrated that two-thirds of the newspapers provided links to their own archives, but only one-third offered any links to interactive possibilities such as chats or forums. These results seem to validate Kovaricks (2002) assessment that Unfortunately, most news organizations dont take advantage of external links to outside groups and miss the chance to provide context and use the Web to its full advantage. Ha and Lincoln (1998) reached a similar conclusion when examining the interactive nature of business websites. They found that links to external or third-party websites were quite rare. Links within the same site were very common, however. The authors argued that choices in business websites give a false sense of empowerment and that there is an illusion of connectedness to the outside Web world (Ha and Lincoln, 1998). Whether or not a writer or editor gives up control by writing in hypertext remains a matter of some debate. Li suggested that the Internet news environment, which may take into account audience interest and feedback in the creation of content, inherently shifts the balance of power from the news sender to the news receiver (Li, 1998). However, McAdams and Berger (2001) maintain that the author does not give up control in hypertext. By choosing which hyperlinks to include, the author or editor is deciding which story threadsor which other websitesare accessible from the current page. The decision about which story threads or other websites are offered by an individual newspapers Web page is, in fact, an exercise of an online newspapers gatekeeping authority. It remains unclear whether online newspapers are taking full advantage of the possibilities the World Wide Web offers. The literature summarized above does not offer denitive answers to many of the questions currently being asked about news coverage on the Web. For example, there are no studies comparing the treatment of a major news event by online newspapers. This is an important area of study, since major news events, especially those that offered editorial staff a long lead time in which to prepare, present the greatest possible oppor-

tunity to search for relevant links to include in their stories. In addition, there is a paucity of research on what kind of hyperlinks newspapers are most likely to include in their websites. Past research in this area gives few insights on the placement and characteristics of hyperlinks used by online newspapers. The goal of this study is to explore these two broad issues. Accordingly, the study investigates the following research questions: How often do online newspapers use hyperlinks to refer readers to outside websites? What are the characteristics of online newspapers hyperlinks?

Study Design and Method Sample This study examined the online editions of the top 15 US newspapers listed by the Columbia Journalism Review as the Best American Newspapers.1 These were The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, St. Petersburg Times, The Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Oregonian, USA Today, Newsday and The Seattle Times. These newspapers represent a cross-section of circulation sizes, geographic locations, and ownership types, as shown in Table 1. The study focused on the immediate coverage of McVeighs execution. The goal of the study was to capture the online coverage of a major preplanned public event and the execution of McVeigh provided a good example of such coverage. By focusing on one story, as opposed to all stories contained on the online newspapers home pages on a given day, the study eliminates the issues involved with the lack of conformity across newspaper websites which might be due to local story differences or online formats. The online stories about McVeighs execution in the sample newspapers were downloaded on Monday, June 11, 2001, following the morning execution. Starting with the front page, all subject hyperlinks were followed three levels down,2 with each associated story printed and saved. A subject hyperlink was dened as a

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Table 1. Sample newspapers Newspaper name The New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal Los Angeles Times The Dallas Morning News Chicago Tribune The Boston Globe San Jose Mercury News St. Petersburg Times The Sun The Philadelphia Inquirer The Oregonian USA Today The Seattle Times Newsday Proximity to Oklahoma City 1480 1330 1480 1340 210 830 1690 1360 1030 1310 1390 1870 1330 1990 1380 Circulation size 1,097,180 762,009 1,762,751 1,033,399 495,597 661,699 464,472 268,621 333,250 317,452 400,385 351,303 1,692,666 225,510 576,345 Scope National National National Regional Regional Regional Regional Regional Regional Regional Regional Regional National Regional Regional Ownership New York Times Washington Post Dow Jones Times Mirror A.H. Belo Tribune New York Times Knight Ridder Independent Times Mirror Knight Ridder Newhouse Gannett Independent Times Mirror

Air-travel distance was measured in miles. Daily newspaper circulation as of 2000 was used in this study. Four newspapers were coded as national in scope: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the USA Today. The sample included two independent and 13 syndicated newspapers.

link from the current Web page that was substantively related to the event studied McVeighs execution. Thus, the three Web layers were preserved for access at a later time. This was critical due to frequent updates of online publications. Categories For most categories, the unit of analysis was the story. In addition, individual hyperlinks were also used as units of analysis and coded for specic characteristics of each hyperlink. The research study was designed to analyze the source, frequency and type of online stories related to McVeighs execution as well as associated hyperlinks. Thus, the online stories were coded for the following categories: the URL of the newspaper homepage, date of story, whether it was a front-page story, word count per story, number of pictures/graphic elements accompanying story (including the number of AP photos), source of story (staff writer, AP, another wire service, or another newspaper reporter). The categories also included the number of subject links from the current page and the number of links to interactive forums. The study also analyzed the type and desti-

nation of hyperlinks from all McVeighs stories published in the top three levels of the newspaper website. A separate code sheet was developed and specic categories were created to capture the major attributes of the hyperlinks. The links from McVeighs stories were coded for: type of link (text, video, photo, or audio), destination of the link (within the newspaper website or outside), outside destination of the hyperlink, location of the link in relationship to story layout (in body of text and outside body of textsuch as a headline, photo, frame/sidebar), and relative prominence. The prominence category included three levels: high, medium, and low prominence. A high prominence link was dened as being very noticeable on the Web page and hard to overlook, typically either large or positioned in a strategic space. Headline links, large bold links, colored links, photo and graphics links, all ashing or moving links, and any links that were clearly dominant on the page were coded as high prominence. For instance, a large color headline at the top left of a black-and-white Web page would fall into the high prominence category. A low prominence link was dened as being very easy to overlook, in small type, embedded in the text or at the bottom of the pageany link that the user

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Table 2. Number of stories and hyperlinks per newspaper Newspaper name The New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal Los Angeles Times The Dallas Morning News Chicago Tribune The Boston Globe San Jose Mercury News St. Petersburg Times The Sun The Philadelphia Inquirer The Oregonian USA Today The Seattle Times Newsday Total Number of stories 10 20 8 35 69 23 3 3 89 11 6 75 67 3 51 473 Percent of stories 2.1 4.2 1.7 7.4 14.6 4.9 0.6 0.6 18.8 2.3 1.3 15.9 14.2 0.6 10.8 100.0 Number of links 54 250 16 1837 116 120 2 12 189 44 6 4 364 7 331 3352 Percent of links 1.6 7.5 0.5 54.8 3.5 3.6 0.1 0.4 5.6 1.3 0.2 0.1 10.9 0.2 9.9 100.0

would have to search for. For example, hyperlinks in small type, buried at the bottom of a long story to which a reader would need to scroll down, were characterized as low prominence links. All other links were characterized as medium prominence links. A separate category to account for duplicate links was also created. Coding Process All stories on McVeigh in the top three layers of the online newspaper, as well as all hyperlinks from these stories, were content-analyzed. This resulted in a total of 473 stories and 3352 subject hyperlinks. To determine intercoder reliability, ve of the 15 newspapers were randomly selected and analyzed. Five coders coded the front-page stories of the sample and the subject hyperlinks from those stories. Average intercoder reliability across all categories was established at 0.90 for the stories and 0.97 for the subject hyperlinks, using Holstis formula (Holsti, 1969).3 Perfect agreement between the coders was established for some categories, such as the URL of homepage of the online newspaper, for instance. The lowest intercoder reliability was 0.80 for the story source category. Differences between the coders were reconciled at a training session.

Hyperlinking, Gatekeeping and the McVeigh Story: study ndings The content analysis of all McVeigh stories, published in the top three levels of the sample online newspapers, resulted in a total of 473 stories (see Table 2). There was a wide disparity in the amount of coverage allotted to McVeighs execution across the newspapers. For example, the St. Petersburg Times had 89 stories on McVeigh published in their June 11, 2001 online edition. In contrast, The Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, and The Seattle Times had only three stories each on that subject on the day of the execution. The mean number of McVeigh stories was 31.5 stories per newspaper. About a quarter of the McVeigh stories were dead ends or terminal Web pages. Thus, three-fourths of the stories had at least one hyperlink for the readers to follow, increasing the perceived level of interactivity. Interestingly, almost 70 percent of the stories had no pictures. While the majority of the graphics used in the stories were static photographs, there were a few graphics that were purposebuilt for the Internet environment. A notable interactive graphical element was an animated graphic of the death chamber. Another interactive element was the death calendar, which

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showed a photograph of McVeigh with a calendar that provided visual countdown of the days left until his execution. About 28 percent of the stories originated in housei.e., were written by a staff reporter. However, almost half of the stories (49.7 percent) came from the AP wire service. The source was not attributed in 12.7 percent of the cases. Hyperlink Destinations The total number of hyperlinks from the top three layers of the sample online newspapers was 3352. The frequency of hyperlinks varied widely across the papers. For example, the Los Angeles Times online edition had a total of 1837 subject hyperlinks while The Oregonian had only four subject links and The Boston Globe had only two links. Similar to the stories, the hyperlinks were unequally distributed across the online newspapers. The average number of links per newspaper was 223.5. It is important to note that the averages may be somewhat skewed because of the disproportionate use of hyperlinks by the Los Angeles Times.4 The rst research question asked how often online newspapers use hyperlinks to refer readers to outside websites. Internal and external hyperlinks were clearly distinguished by the Web address. The results show that the vast majority of the hyperlinks (94.8 percent) took the reader to related material located within the online newspapers own website. The destination of the hyperlinks was an outside website in only 137 (4.1 percent) cases. In 1.1 percent of the cases, it was difcult to tell after retrieving the online articles what the destination of the hyperlink was. The most common generic top level domain (TLD)5 of the outside links was by far the .com domain, which accounted for 64.9 percent of the cases. It was quite common to include outside hyperlinks to other afliated news organizations. For example, the Wall Street Journals coverage included a link to CNBC.com video. The remaining outside hyperlinks took the user to .org (29.9 percent) and .gov (3.6 percent) destinations. One newspaper included a .gov link to a website

of federal rules and procedures relating to federal executions. There were no links to the .edu, .net, .mil or .int domains from the sample stories. Gatekeeping theory, which includes the practice of controlling information available to online news consumers by the use of hyperlinks, also guided the inclusion of a category for duplicate hyperlinks. A duplicate link was dened as a link to a story that linked back to a story already coded. It was somewhat surprising that 80.1 percent of the links in the sample were duplicates. Consequently, only about one-fth of the links were originals, i.e., not duplicates of previous links, that took the reader to information not yet seen. The number of subject hyperlinks per story also varied widely across the online papers. One story provided 172 hyperlinks while others had none. Specically, 27.5 percent of the stories had no subject hyperlinks; 20.5 percent had only one hyperlink; and 15.6 percent had seven links. Eight stories had 83 hyperlinks each, and 23 stories offered 33 links each. The Washington Post, for example, provided links to a large number of archival stories about the McVeigh trial. On average, there were seven subject links per story. Characteristics of Hyperlinks The second research question concerned the general characteristics of the hyperlinks. This content analysis captured the number and the various attributes of the links provided by the sample online newspapers. What type of hyperlink was most commonly used? The links were coded for the following categories: text, video, photo, or audio link. Almost 90 percent of the hyperlinks were text links (see Table 3). Only 5 percent were video hyperlinks. A commonly used video link across the sample newspapers was a speech given by the warden at the prison following McVeighs execution. Audio links constituted 3 percent of all hyperlinks. President Bushs reaction to the execution was frequently included as an audio link. Of the total of 3352 hyperlinks, only 2.4 percent were photo links. The ndings also show that only 22.8 percent

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Table 3. Type of hyperlink Type of link Text Video Audio Photo Cant tell Total Number of links 2999 163 99 82 9 3352 Percent of links 89.5 4.9 3.0 2.4 0.3 100.0

links. Almost 91 percent of the hyperlinks had medium prominence on the Web page.

Differences Across Newspapers The sample included both national and regional newspapers with different characteristics, as shown in Table 1. Therefore, it was possible to examine the effects of proximity to the event, circulation size, geographic region, and ownership on the online coverage of McVeighs execution. Newspapers were grouped together based on their distance from the event, using air miles from Oklahoma City to the place of the print publication. The Pearson correlation shows that newspapers further away from the event were more likely to have shorter stories compared with those closer to Oklahoma City (see Table 4). These differences were statistically signicant (r 0.16, p 0.000). Consistent with previous research, newspapers with higher circulation had more extensive coverage of the event. Larger circulation newspapers, on average, provided more links (r 0.41, p 0.000) and more interactive forums (r 0.39, p 0.000). National papers also had more extensive online coverage, both in terms of text, pictures, and interactive forums. Table 5 shows that national newspapers used hyperlinks more extensively than their regional counterparts. This held true not only for regular links (t(471) 4.14, p 0.000), but also for links to interactive forums (t(471) 3.90, p 0.000). As Table 6 shows, there were also statistically signicant differences between independent and chain papers. Syndicated papers used signicantly more pictures in the online coverage (t(471) 2.28, p 0.02), more hyperlinks
Table 4. Correlations for geographic proximity and circulation sizea Coverage Story length Pictures AP photos Hyperlinks Interactive forums
a Pearson r, two-tailed. *p 0.05; ***p 0.001.

of the stories offered links to interactive forums. Chat rooms and bulletin boards were the most common interactive elements used. Signicantly, a number of newspapers included post your opinion links. Online polls to gather the readers opinions immediately after the execution were also used in some cases. However, no interactive hyperlink choices were available from 76.7 percent of the stories on the McVeigh execution. In terms of placement, only 0.3 percent of the hyperlinks were located within the text of the online story. The Los Angeles Times, for example, included McVeighs handwritten notethe poem Invictusas a hyperlink from within the body of the text of the main article. The vast majority of the hyperlinks (over 96 percent) were located in a sidebar. It was common to see all hyperlinks separated in a sidebar to the left or right of the article. Only 1.2 percent of the links were part of story headlines. Photos were also used as hyperlinks to the next level. Hyperlinks were also coded for their relative prominence on the Web page. A low prominence link was dened as being very easy to overlook, such as a small link in a tiny font underneath a more prominent link or link that the user would have to search for. A high prominence link, on the other hand, was characterized as being very noticeable and hard to overlook. Only 7.6 percent of the McVeigh links had high prominence whereas 1.5 percent had low prominence. An example of a hyperlink that stood out as high prominence was The Wall Street Journals inclusion of a large, color peacock of the NBC logo in the middle of a blackand-white Web page. Most hyperlinks were of medium prominence: links being easy to locate, but not dominating the page, such as sidebar

Proximity 0.16*** 0.10* 0.02 0.09* 0.18***

Circulation 0.15*** 0.55*** 0.08 0.41*** 0.39***

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Table 5. Differences between national and regional newspapersa Coverage Story length Pictures*** AP photos Hyperlinks*** Interactive forums***
a

National 626.26 2.17 0.07 18.86 0.38

Regional 595.01 0.29 0.18 8.38 0.20

t-test, two-tailed. ***p 0.001.

Table 6. Differences based on newspaper ownershipa Coverage Story length** Pictures** AP photos*** Hyperlinks* Interactive forums***
a

Independent 467.66 0.37 0.35 5.93 0.00

Syndicated 634.37 0.79 0.15 11.30 0.29

t-test, two-tailed. *p 0.05; **p 0.01; ***p 0.001.

(t(471) 2.47, p 0.01), and more interactive forums (t(471) 6.03, p 0.000) than their independent counterparts.

Hyperlinking, Gatekeeping and the McVeigh Story: discussion We started out with the expectation that online newspapers would branch out to various outside sources, especially in the coverage of a well-publicized preplanned news event such as the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh. In terms of gatekeeping theory, we were interested to see how online news editors had redened their role as news lters by providing not only text and graphics, but also hyperlinks to other relevant destinations. Thus, our rst research question asked how often online newspapers used hyperlinks to refer readers to outside websites. Surprisingly, the results showed that very few of the linksonly 4.1 percent led to external sources. The vast majority of the hyperlinks took the reader to related material located within the online newspapers own website. As a result, the ratio of outside to within site links was, roughly, 123.

Choosing which hyperlinks to includeand which not tois an exercise of the gatekeeping function of the online newspaper. A standard argument against providing external links is that readers may never come back to your site. However, with the current Web technology it is possible to open links in pop-up windows or within frames in the current page, thus enhancing the readers experience of the news site and not necessarily losing them. Journalists seeking hypertext links for this major public event had a wide range of options from which to choose. These included prodeath penalty sites (e.g., Death Penalty Information at www.dpinfo.com); anti-death penalty sites (e.g., Amnesty International at www.amnesty.org); victim memorial sites (e.g., Oklahoma City National Memorial at www. oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org); and counter-terrorism sites (e.g., The Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism at www.mipt.org)all of which contained material directly related to the bombing and its aftermath. Government documents related to the McVeigh case were also widely available. Most newspapers, however, ignored these potential links to other relevant information for their readers. The lack of outside hyperlinks seems particularly surprising in the case of the McVeigh execution, since its advance scheduling afforded online news organizations ample time to prepare stories rich in hypertext links. Their conspicuous absence, therefore, leads to one of two possible explanations. The rst explanation is that online newspaper editors are making a conscious gatekeeping decision to limit visitor information about a story to the information made available within their own website. In this case, unwillingness to give up control of the visitors news experience explains the lack of hyperlinks to outside websites. The warning given by The New York Times before allowing a reader to leave the site for a thirdparty link seems to support this explanation. A second, alternative explanation for the absence of outside hyperlinks is that online newspaper editors are uncomfortable writing in hypertext. In this case, persistent views of journalism as a one-dimensional medium explain

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the lack of hyperlinks to outside websites. From this perspective, the gatekeeping decision to keep visitors within the newspapers own website may be an incidental one, with online journalists incorporating internal links to guide readers to additional information within the site, without rethinking their journalistic end product as taking advantage of the external Internet environment. In the past, online newspapers have been criticized for simply shoveling their print content online and not adapting their stories for the online environment. The majority of the online newspapers in this study offered hyperlinks from McVeighs stories. Most of the links, though, were to in-house material. What could be the benets to online readers if external links were more common? Nora Paul (1995) argued that the reporters job in the online world would be to nd relevant resources to benet the reader in the following three areas: (1) direct access to source documents; (2) links to opinion of experts; (3) more context to the story. Also, the literature indicates that links are benecial because they offer interactivity (Peng et al., 1999), in-depth reporting (Kovarick, 2002), and give control to the reader/user (Althaus and Tewksbury, 2000), which can facilitate learning (Eveland and Dunwoody, 2001). Typically, source documents and expert opinions will be found on external websites, while the story context can be provided, at least partially, by past coverage in the same newspaper. The ndings of this content analysis clearly indicate that even given plenty of lead time to nd relevant external material, the majority of links were to in-house material. Therefore, it may not be far fetched to conclude that online newspapers are unwilling to give up their gatekeeping function by sending readers to outside websites. Deuze (2002) even argues that if a site only refers to documents within a particular site, it actually tells the end-user that the World Wide Web does not exist. There were differences among the sample newspapers in their infrequent use of outside websites. When looking at the non-duplicate links only, several interesting observations are worth noting. The New York Times, often considered the agenda-setter of all American

media, had no links to the .com domain. Half of its outside links were to .gov and the other half took the reader to .org destinations. In contrast, USA Today included only .com external links. So did The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, and The Seattle Times. Signicantly, The St. Petersburg Times incorporated only .org links: 73 percent of its external non-duplicate links were to the .org domain. It seems likely that this selection was a deliberate editorial decision as .org links may be perceived as having higher credibility than .com links. The McVeigh coverage in Newsday received the most external links among the sample papers. Those non-duplicate links, except for one, sent the reader to the .com domain. There may be some practical reasons why online newspapers do not seem to hyperlink as much as expected to external websites. First, obviously it is more time consuming for the reporter to nd relevant outside information. Web reporters may not have the time to search for additional information and evaluate relevant websites for their content down a number of levels. Secondly, journalists may be unwilling to take responsibility for the accuracy of information provided on someone elses website. In fact, The New York Times had a special warning under some of its outside links listed under Related Sites. It read: These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. Third, a very practical reason for not sending readers out could be that outside Web content, especially online video, is paid content. This may be the case as we observed that newspapers afliated with MSNBC were likely to offer MSNBC video coverage. There is no consensus in the literature describing whether hyperlinks are desirable or not. Some argue that links add to the online experience (Paul, 1995) while others see links as possibly distracting and requiring substantial cognitive effort by the user (Eveland and Dunwoody, 2001). Much additional information from multimedia sources, then, can distract the reader. On the other hand, distinctiveness theory suggests that distinctive visual stimulus may be remembered more clearly by the online readers.

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At a Poynter Institute seminar, Nora Paul (1995) advised newspaper staff representatives to re-think reporting for the Web. She emphasized that on the Internet, reporters have to think of layering of news and take advantage of hypertext. She argued that nding relevant external Web documents to a story should be part of the reporters job. The ndings of our study show that external links were not offered as often as might be expected for a medium often touted for its ability to provide broad access to information from sources all over the world. By hyperlinking to their own online content, Web newspapers were limiting readers choices by ltering the news links selection. In other words, they closed the door to other news sources on the World Wide Web. Theoretically, these ndings point to a new type of gatekeeping becoming prevalent in an online environment. This new phenomenon, which involves keeping online readers from accessing external sites while simultaneously providing the illusion of an interactive environment, may change the traditional denition of gatekeeping theory. Several of the categories incorporated in this content analysis were specically designed to capture the characteristics of the hyperlinks, as research in this area is still lacking. In one of the few experimental studies, van Oostendorp and van Nimwegen (1998) found that it is better to avoid presenting information on deeper hypertextual levels for which scrolling is necessary. They concluded that scrolling below the screen level takes extra time for the reader and extra cognitive resources. This study overwhelmingly points to the fact that online newspapers are making similar placement decisions in spite of the latitude available in Web page layout. The ndings reveal that, with a few exceptions, the links were located outside of the story text. This may be simply due to practical considerations of online publishing/uploading and the use of templates. Hyperlinks were most commonly located in sidebars. According to distinctiveness theory, this seems a good choice, as readers may be drawn to the links. Photos and headlines were also used as links in a number of cases. While headlines are typically underlined and thus invite the experienced user to click, photo-

graph links are less intuitive. This issue was often solved by having the headline and the photo link to the same story. Even if a newspaper includes many clearly separated hyperlinks, these hyperlinks will be of no use if the user cannot locate them quickly and easily. For example, it is less likely that users will take advantage of a hyperlink if it is buried at the bottom of the screen. We incorporated a category for prominence of links in relationship to the online story. The study showed that the majority of the hyperlinks were of medium prominence. It seems that online newspapers have already settled upon their standards for links as being visible and easy to locate, but not dominant on the page. There were relatively few examples of high and low prominence links in our study. Nora Paul (1995) said that on the Web text, photos and graphics will be joined by sound, video and animation. Indeed, several of the sample newspapers chose to include a number of multimedia links. Many Web newspapers provided video links to interviews with people present during the execution. Several online papers offered audio links to President Bushs reaction to the execution. Multimedia links can be seen as valuable additions for online newspapers, as they truly represent convergence between print, audio and video in an online context. Interestingly, in this content analysis there were more video links than photo links overall. However, the majority of the links were traditional text links. For a less sophisticated user, those can be more intuitive and easy to follow. Finally, it was somewhat surprising to nd out that there was a tendency to recycle hyperlinks across the sample newspapers in eight out of 10 cases. Duplicates of links offered in previous stories were quite common. For instance, the same sidebar was recycled numerous times in the online version of the Los Angeles Times. This circular linking needs to be examined in more detail in future research particularly because online users may perceive the erroneous impression of interactivity in news content, unless they pay close attention to where hyperlinks take them. The ndings of this study have several prac-

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tical implications. First, more stafng may be necessary for online newsrooms to add resources in order to nd more relevant links and incorporate more multimedia. Providing links might even become a separate kind of service offered by news wires. In addition, journalism training needs to adjust curriculum to teach students how to write for the Web and take advantage of hypertext capabilities. Pavlik (1997) identied three stages in the development of online newspapers. First, recycling materials from the print edition onto the websites; second, the print edition copy is supplemented with interactive features, including hyperlinks and search engines; and third, specic copy is created for the online version. Based on Pavliks denition, our ndings suggest that the leading American online papers may be at the second stage of development. They have begun to incorporate Web-specic features such as hyperlinks, chat rooms and content-related discussion boards, but are not revamping their content completely for the online medium. The Internet gives every newspaper the potential for reaching a worldwide audience. It might be seen as a great equalizer, since without distribution concerns, every newspaper in theory has access to the same pool of online news readers. However, the patterns that emerged in this study indicate that online versions of newspapers make news judgments similar to those of their print counterparts. Even a story of great national importance in the United States, such as Timothy McVeighs execution, was covered by online newspapers in a manner that reected regional priorities. This was reected by the strong relationship between proximity to Oklahoma City and length of coverage of the McVeigh execution. The extensive coverage of McVeighs execution in the online version of The Dallas Morning News, the newspaper in this sample closest to Oklahoma, illustrates this point. Additionally, the ndings indicate that even without signicant distribution and newshole constraints, larger circulation, syndicated newspapers still provided signicantly more coverage of the event than smaller circulation, independent newspapers. National newspapers

had signicantly more hyperlinks and other Web features than regional newspapers. This nding suggests that the countrys largest newspapersThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Todayhave more nancial and human resources to dedicate to their online editions, as well as their paper editions. Chain newspapers allocated more copy to the McVeigh story than independent newspapers. Independent newspapers, on the other hand, were less likely to include photos and links in their stories. It appears that larger papers seem to be ahead in adding Internet features to their coverage while smaller, independent, regional papers are lagging behind. This study indicates that the differences that so often characterize print newspapers are also present in their online counterparts. Although online newspapers are not constrained by circulation and distribution costs, the content of online newspapers seems to reect regional news values and target local audiences. Conclusions This study showed that online newspapers are not taking full advantage of the Internet in general and hypertext in particular. Future research should compare the online newspaper coverage of McVeighs execution with the coverage in the print papers. Furthermore, another venue for future research would be to examine how the execution was covered by the international press. Even though some Web publications had links to outside resources, the McVeigh stories in this study were accompanied mostly by links within the same newspaper sites. The additional content provided by outside hyperlinks was often from the parent company of the newspaper or some other afliated news source. Thus, it seems clear that the gatekeeping role of online editors remains strong. Contrary to arguments that the Internet is a more egalitarian medium, online news readers are still given tightly monitored link choices. By choosing certain hyperlinks and ignoring others, online newspapers are more often than not keeping the gate to the vast information available on the Internet closed.

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Notes
1 2 3

4 5

The complete listing of the Columbia Journalism Review as well as methodology details can be found at http://www.cjr.org/ year/99/6/best.asp. Because of the content focus of The Wall Street Journal, analysis was started at the second level, and thus included the fourth hypertext level in this particular newspaper. Intercoder reliability was calculated based on Holstis formula: IR 2M/(N1 N2), where M is the number of agreements between the coders, N1 is the total number of coding decisions made by Coder 1 and N2 is the total number of coding decisions made by Coder 2. The frequencies were rerun without the Los Angeles Times because of the disproportionate number of links from that paper. The results were similar and are not reported in this study. TLD (top level domain) is the three-letter extension in any URL/http address. For example, www.cia.gov address is in the. gov domain. Generic TLDs do not include country domains. At the time this study was conducted, seven generic TLDs existed:. com,. edu,. gov,. int,. mil,. net, and org. Consequently, additional domain names have been released by ICANN.

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