watch your head as i heave Reading Online News: A Comparison of Three Presentation Formats into the ol' annotated bookmark bin :

"With the ever-increasing progression towards online newsletters as a principal source of information presentation, the Web has offered many opportunities as well as challenges that are unique to this environment. For instance, the traditional newspaper presents information within the confines of evenly-spaced, gridded columns. This has worked quite well in the past, and readers have become very accustomed to this style of information presentation. However, with the advent of the Web, it is now possible to place information in multiple sources that are connected by link titles--permitting online newsletters to initially present only a small amount of pertinent information through the use of these links."

"Accordingly, this study addressed the question of how information should be presented within a news-style web page. For example, should all the information related to a single article be presented on one page, or should the newsletter contain a page that lists only the link titles that relate to each specific article, and which is presented on another page? Moreover, if the newsletter presents initial information in the form of link titles, should they present supplementary information that provides a general overview of the entire article, along with the link title?"

the results are straighforward. people prefer executive summaries. [ via webword ]