Ana Bernal Triviño recently completed her doctorate at the University of Malaga, Spain. Her choice of thesis, entitled "Design preferences of the young regarding journalistic information on the internet" has already attracted some interest from media commentators and professionals alike.

Bernal's research throws some light on the relationship between the young and their preferred choice of medium - the web - in particular, addressing issues such as the relevance of design, content and layout in attracting younger readers to websites.

In an interview with media expert, Dr. Mario R. García of Garcí­a Media, Bernal says that her study confirms "the young prefer reading news online, as it agrees more with their fast paced lifestyle", but that a website that fails to think carefully about design is likely to fail in attracting and hanging onto readers.

Bernal realised early on that it was the internet that constituted the main news source for the majority of her young Spanish peers, who rarely sought information from television and much less radio. In addition to content, she came to the conclusion that the internet offered some "specific design elements" and, hoping to understand which of these elements proved the most appealing, Bernal set about working on her thesis.

"In Spain, young people have grown up in a sort of parallel environment to the introduction of new technologies. Their visual awareness and training is very different from those of the generations that preceded them", says Bernal.

When asked what her top three recommendations would be to a media house, Bernal's first answer is significant: adaptability. The idea that this should be the first step is "obvious", as she herself admits, but the fact that it is even mentioned goes to show that too many traditional news outlets, namely of the paper variety, are already falling at the first hurdle. Visual material in the form of photos and video, as well as screen-friendly typography such as sans serif fonts in bigger type size are her other two suggestions.

Bernal goes onto explain that in addition to the simple question of keeping up with people's ever-frenetic lives, the internet is also preferable because it offers readers choice: the choice to read in one's own time, as well as the choice to digest information in a variety of multimedia platforms, including audio and video material, such as podcasts.

Bernal ends the interview on a positive note, saying she does not believe that newspapers are about to disappear, referring to the printed word as "the first mode of communication", although surely her findings disprove this notion, at least as far as the young are concerned. And even if this is true - like the "credibility and prestige" often associated with print that she refers to - the young readers of today will one day become the mainstream media-consuming readers of tomorrow and if they are not in the habit of reading the printed word today, who's to say that they will develop this habit in the future? Besides, credibility and prestige doesn't necessarily guarantee circulation, as another study recently revealed and, as award-winning journalists at papers such as the Rocky Mountain News have recently learned the hard way.

With that said, editors and publishers alike should take note of these results, for though the survey was conducted in Spain, Garcí­a is right to observe that Bernal's doctoral thesis "has great significance for all of us in journalism". Like Bernal, I do not think that we have seen the end of the newspaper, but the newspaper format as we know it will need revising, as will online equivalents.

Yet, before editorial houses look to throw money at these issues, they should first look to modify the current newsroom culture. For no matter how much money is invested in integrating digital and print operations, until attitudes change and we abandon the "them and us" mindset of internet versus print and we accept that news packaging doesn't necessarily compromise news quality, the malady which has plagued the news world will remain. If nothing else, hopefully the current recession will help us to stop thinking of the news-gathering process as an organic, static medium, but instead as the ongoing process of transformation that it is. After all, as Bernal, notes "one medium after another has emerged, and not necessarily eliminated the previous media."

Sources: Garcí­a Media , Revista Latina de Comunicación Social