News

The model of information consumption is changing and dictates new conditions to the media. The news editors are affected by an overabundance of content, high competition, and rapid movement of the reader between sites. Media representatives at the seccion “Star in the smartphone: the era of digital media, technologies for customizing content and creating super-popular digital channels” have discussed a new reality.

Today in the media there is a war for a split second - how to keep the reader's attention during the scroll. “According to research, in the presence of numerous news feeds, the reader’s gaze lingers on one element from 0.5 to 0.15 seconds. This is enough to see a bright photo and title. The text and the announcement no longer work”, notes Anews CEO Vyacheslav Masenkov. - “At the same time, there is an interesting trend - the headlines are getting longer because the media are trying to make them as much meaningful as possible.”

According to The Story Lab COO Kamal Meriem, a huge amount of content leads to fragmentation of attention: “By assimilating three units of content at the same time, we are unlikely to focus much on each of them. It is becoming more and more difficult to make spending one and a half to two hours for one product, this can be called weekend consumption. We have only micropauses: while waiting for a taxi or going out to smoke. And these pauses are filled by relatively new players - TikTok, short formats on Instagram”. In this regard, the news format in TikTok, according to Kamal Meriem, could become a "interesting project."

Experiments and hype should not supplant classic formats, insists Dmitry Elovsky, deputy editor-in-chief of Snob Media: “We love our audience and are not ready to give up longreads, although the average reading time is falling down. The ways of presenting information and disseminating it are changing, but there should be a classic too”.