Online news lasts for 36 hours only
[ MONDAY, JUNE 06, 2005 10:38:14 AM] The shelf-life of an online news story is just 36 hours, says a recent research. This confirms what we have always suspected — yesterday’s news is stale A team of scientists from Hungary and the United States has found that the majority of online news items have a lifetime of just 36 hours. As reporters have always suspected, yesterday’s news is stale, and the day before’s news is invisible. Zoltan Dezs of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and colleagues came up with the figure from an analysis of hits on Origo, Hungary’s main online news and entertainment portal. The researchers say that the result could help news agencies to determine how much impact their stories have, and how that depends on the online habits of their readers. It has always been difficult to assess the lifetime and impact of newspaper stories, because it is hard to monitor buyers’ reading habits. But working out which stories they read, and when, is easier for online sites