Final paper
Multimedia coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the top five most-trafficked news sites
by Zhizhong Li
November 30, 2001

INTRODUCTION

The Internet is becoming an important part of electronic communications today. Combining radio and television with its speed and combination with audio, video, print, and worldwide access, the Internet is reshaping the news market (Thalhimer, 1998, p. 1).

Web technologies develop quickly. Compared with ten years ago, today's Internet has already become much more dynamic and interactive. With the use of more new technologies, the content of the site reflects the technical characteristics of the media. Both content and technology have strong relationship with the concept of interactivity (Pines, 1999).

Since September 11 when the terrorists attacks were unfolded, millions of people around the world went online for more detailed information, according to the New York Times (Stellin, 2001, p. 1). According to Jupiter Media Matrix, nearly 51 million people in the United States visited online news sites in September. Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research for Jupiter Media Metrix, said 'the enormity of the increase and the pervasiveness demonstrate that the Web has clearly emerged as a major news outlet for many people.' The multimedia features play an important role for online news sites to attract more visitors.

Windows Media, RealNetworks, and QuickTime are currently the most commonly used streaming media platforms (Glossary, 2001). According to NPD Online Research, Macromedia's Flash is the mostly used one to view animations online (NPD Methodology, 2001).

This paper will examine the use of these four popular multimedia platforms (Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime, and Macromedia Flash) on the top five most visited news sites covering the September 11 attacks.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Why this study is important?

According to Nielsen, different technical features such as animation, can distract readers or make readers' eyes tired. Facing the fierce competition of many online newspapers, webmasters need to understand what kinds of technologies they should use to make their sites clear and more readable. This study will provide later researchers detailed information about how online news sites deliver the news content with Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime, and Macromedia Flash.

A brief history of online newspaper and TV sites

The Internet started 28 years ago, but newspaper publishers did not favor it as an electronic publishing platform until 1993 when the World Wide Web came onto the scene (Foo, Hao, & Tham, 1999). Knight Ridders published the first complete online newspaper when the San Jose Mercury News debuted on America Online in May 1993. Knight Ridder was the first customer of Mosaic Communications (now Netscape) in October 1994, and in 1996 it became the first major newspaper group to publish its all online newspapers (Violino, 1998). National news broadcasters did not really rush to the Web in the early 1990s (Tremayne, 2001). According to Tremayne, a national broadcaster did not create its own web site until March of 1995, which was CBS's overnight news show 'Up To The Minute' that provided headlines of five national stories. For online TV sites, the bandwidth insufficiency restricts the story deliveries in their original audio or audio-visual format. Therefore, separate Web staffs had to be hired. CNN succeeded on this and appeared on the Internet by August of 1995. MSNBC and Fox followed in 1996. ABC's TV site was born in 1997, and by this time CBS had upgraded its site as well (Tremayne, 2001).

Information of Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime, and Macromedia Flash

1. Microsoft Windows Media Technologies

Microsoft Windows Media is a set of digital media components and features that fuel a revolution in how news, information, and entertainment is distributed and experienced ('Windows Media Overview,' 2001).

According to Microsoft, the key concepts of Windows Media Technologies include: capturing, distributing, playing, downloading, streaming and encoding Windows Media content.

A song or a video regular audio and video players can be digitized via a capture program and saved as a standard Microsoft file format. For example, a song can be saved as an AIF file, and a video can be saved as an AVI file. After that, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder should be used to convert it into a Windows Media file. At this moment, the song or video is no longer sound or pictures. It is data. Analog information from the audio player or VCR is converted into a digital stream of zeros and ones, or bits. The bits are not the audio or video itself, but rather a series of instructions for how to recreate the audio or video in analog form (Microsoft Corporation, 2000).

With Microsoft Windows Media technologies, Windows Media files can be delivered to clients over a network using one of two methods: downloading and streaming.

The Windows Media file format is optimized for streaming, but the file can be downloaded as well. After the digital media is converted to a Windows Media file, it can be copied or published to a location on the server. When a user wants to play content that is available for downloading, the user can click a hyperlink on a Web page that points to the file on the server. The browser then initiates the process of copying the file from the server. After the file has been copied to the user's hard drive, the user can open and play the file by using Windows Media Player. Downloading files takes time because all the data have to be copied from the server to the hard drive before the user can play the file. Copying time directly relies on the available bandwidth of the network and the communication speed of the user's modem (Microsoft Corporation, 2000).

The concept of streaming comes from the idea of simply playing the data as it is received by the client's computer instead of waiting for bits to be copied. By streaming, Windows Media Encoder sends the bits it creates directly over a network to a player instead of to a file. For streaming to work, the bit rate must be lower than the bandwidth of the network. When the file is playing in Windows Media Player, the bits are steaming at a steady and continuous rate. The player must receive a steam of bits continuously or the picture and sound will stop or will play back unevenly. Therefore, when a file is encoded for downloading, its size is important and bit rate is irrelevant, but if it is for streaming, the size is irrelevant and the bit rate is important (Microsoft Corporation, 2000).

According to Microsoft, the bit rate of high-resolution, full-frame, broadcast video is about 128 megabits per second (Mbps). It would take one hour and 14 minutes to download one second of broadcast video over a 28.8 kilobit-per-second (Kbps) modem. Steaming this type of video would be impossible over a network, and it also requires a huge storage space for the file. Windows Media technologies handle this problem by using compression to lower the rate while maintaining the best possible quality.

2. RealNetworks

RealNetworks (http://www.real.com), pioneer the Internet media industry by providing media creation, delivery and playback technology in 1995. The representative product of RealNetworks is RealSystem iQ. In response to the needs of content delivery networks, small broadcasters, media developers, ISPs, and enterprises, RealSystem iQ is an essential foundation for intelligent delivery of the highest quality media experience to the largest worldwide audience (RealNetworks, 2001e). RealSystem iQ incorporates numerous products from RealNetworks. As a package, the products can serve the needs of specific rich media while creating, serving and playing the highest quality content on the Web (RealNetworks, 2001d). RealNetworks claims that RealSystem iQ provides satellite and terrestrial delivery among all servers in the network by using Neuralcast Technology. According to the site, today's network has been based on an architecture of origin and edge servers, and this only allows one-way communication from the server to the player. This architecture has limited effectiveness, especially during heavy use periods (RealNetworks, 2001e). Neuralcast Technology, on the contrary, aggregates the capacity of many servers into one, creating a self-aware network where all servers communicate with each other seamless and make instantaneous decisions about capacity sharing, optimization, and redundancy. More clearly, Neuralcast Technology allows all kinds of media content to be injected into the network at any time and delivered anywhere (RealNetworks, 2001e).

As the cornerstone of RealSystem iQ, RealSystem Servers are cross-platform, streaming media servers for creating a strong network architecture and reaching the worldwide audience (RealNetworks, 2001b). In the RealSystem Server family, four products have been designed to meet the needs and applications for numerous customers, from home users to enterainment and enterprise deployments. They are RealSystem Server 8.0 professional, RealSystem Server 8.0 plus, RealSystem Server 8.0 Intranet, and RealSystem Proxy (RealNetworks, 2001b). According to RealNetworks, RealSystem 8 is the oly digital media server essential to intelligently delivering highest quality experiences. RealSystem Proxy is a streaming media proxy-cache that enables ISPs and enterprises to manage digital media content entering their networks. It places content closer to the user and reduces bandwidth use by eliminating transmission of redundant streams (RealNetworks, 2001f).

The benefits of RealSystem iQ also include its ability to combine more than 45 media types to create interactive presentations, including streaming MP3 and Macromedia Flash. Plus, with RealSystems iQ, RealAudio 8 delivers CD quality at just 64 Kbps, and RealVideo 8 delivers VHS quality at mainstream broadband rates (RealNetworks, 2001a). RealAudio 8 incorporates the Sony ATRAC3 format and scales from 12 to 352 Kbps to outperform its predecessor, RealAudio G2, at 63% the data rate. This significantly reduces bandwidth requirements (RealNetworks, 2001c). With RealSystem Producer Plus and Streaming Media Starter Kit, RealVideo 8 can allow users to take advantage of better-than-VHS quality on the Internet by producing VHS quality at 500 Kbps bit rate and DVD quality at 1.0 MBps bit rate (RealNetworks Strategic Video Solutions Laboratory, 2000). According to RealNetworks' Website, RealPlayer is installed on 92% of all U.S. home PCs, and RealNetworks technology is used to broadcast more than 350,000 hours of live sports, music, news and entertainment over the Internet per week. RealVideo, like its predecessor, RealAudio, allows multimedia content to be played almost immediately, rather than waiting for a complete multimedia file to download. It was a solution to narrow bandwidth problems that had kept Web pages largely text-driven. As a result, sites could 'stream' audio and video content directly to a RealNetwork's multimedia plug-in (Williams, 2000).

3. QuickTime

QuickTime technology is developed by Apple Computer Inc. It is an online media solution especially for Machintosh users. QuickTime Technology includes streaming, plug-in tools, movie effects, QTVR (a QuickTime movie made from six faces or from equirectangular images), 3D tools, and movie source editor (QuickTime, 2001c).

According to QuickTime's Web site (http://www.quicktime.com), QuickTime movie is mostly used among all the QuickTime products.

Each element of a QuickTime movie is contained in a separate track. What a QuickTime movie is created by adding tracks that point to the target media. The media may be embedded in the movie itself, or locate on a server far away. Each track represents a unique aspect or ability that a producer can change over time. One QuickTime movie may have many different track types, including video, audio, text, Flash, etc. Each track also contains many modifiable properties (QuickTime, 2001b).

A QuickTime video track can be created from any source that is capable of generating an image sequence in any of the many file formats importable into QuickTime, such as digital video (DV), digitized analog video, a 2D or 3D animation program, etc. One QuickTime movie can have many video tracks, which allow the movie creator to edit and apply layer, effects and transitions. The producer has full control over properties such as frame size, frame rate (frames per second), data rate, and video compression (QuickTime, 2001a).

QuickTime supports a wide range of codecs (compressiors-decompressors), both lossless (high quality, large files) and lossy (lower quality, small files). QuickTime also supports a separate audio track, which actually is a MIDI (Musical Instruments Digital Interface) track that contains, not digitized audio, but not information played with a virtual instrument. QuickTime offers a number of sound and music compressions. Qdesign's Music Codec is recommended because of its high quality and small file size. QuickTime technology also supports fifteen filters for such visual effects as blur, edge detection, emboss, film noise, etc. The QuickTime effects architecture is fully open and extensible, which allows the producer to write filters (QuickTime, 2001a).

4. Macromedia Flash

Macromedia Flash is one of the well-known products of Macromedia Company. It is the solution for producing and delivering high-impact Web sites, as well as resizable and extremely compact full-screen navigation interfaces, technical illustrations, long-form animations, and other dazzling site effects (Macromedia, 2001c).

Instead of using bitmapped graphics like Adobe PhotoShop, Macromedia Flash uses vector graphics technology. Bitmapped images are optimized for a single resolution. On the contrary, vector images can adapt to multiple display sizes and resolutions. This is ideal for displaying Web sites uniformly on set-top boxes, hand-held computers, or PCs. With much smaller file size compared with GIFs' and JPEGs' used on the Web today, vector images'graphics, charts, maps, and animations'fit into compact, efficient files that speed over the Web (Macromedia, 2001c)

The Macromedia Flash file format (SWF) SDK allows developers to write Macromedia (SWF) files, documentation of the Macromedia Flash file format (SWF), and code to write SWF files (Macromedia, 2001a). SWF is the extension of Macromedia Flash file, which is optimized for Web delivery (Macromedia, 2001c).

As of November 30, 2001, the number of worldwide users of Macromedia Flash player reaches to 391,158,222. Macromedia Flash player is the mostly-used application today for dynamic and animated Web experience (Macromedia, 2001b).

Macromedia Flash allows publishers to create a Web experience that is more attractive, more compelling, and compatible with more browsers than with any other Web solution. Dynamic HTML (DHTML), Java, and other advanced Web design formats are not as reliable as Macromedia Flash. They are either not compatible or inconsistent with different browsers. With Macromedia Flash Player's pervasive penetration, wide availability, scalable vectors, animation, sound, and more, sites created with Macromedia Flash technology can provide the high production quality that attracts visitors and brings them back to your site. Macromedia Flash is free of the limiting design capabilities of more traditional Web display options. Therefore, Web publishers can exactly express designing ideas (Macromedia, 2001c).

Past research on multimedia features

Web technologies examined by past researchers include graphics, motion graphics, audio, video, animation, e-mail, scrolling text or ticker, guest book, bulletin board, etc. (Greer, Mensing & LaPointe, 1998; Greer & LaPointe, 1999; Pines, 1999; Greer, 2000).

Newspapers have been easily beaten by television for a while because of their lack of immediacy. But now the Internet is offering newspapers a chance to compete with TV via video, audio, animation, live chat, analysis, in-depth profiles and breaking news (Phipps, 1998).

According to Pines' study (1999), television stations sites are not using many of the nine possible presentation mechanisms defined for the study. Those mechanisms were non-live audio, live audio, non-live video, live video, Web camera, motion graphics, photographs, scrolling text or ticker, and animation.

On television station sites, photographic images were the most commonly used the feature present on 90% of sites. Animation was on 80% of sites in the form of flashing images. Non-live video was presented on almost one-third of examined sites, but Web cameras, live video, motion graphics, and live audio and non-live audio were rarely used (Pines, 1999). With the current bandwidth limitations, online TV sites must present of their information as text (Tremayne, 1999).

MSNBC, the Web-cable partnership between NBC and Microsoft, took the first shot providing online news. It remained arguably the best ' among TV operations, only CNN was better (Featherly, 1998). But more than CNN, MSNBC has designed flash, which provided relatively deep content, and ran ahead of CBS in packaging video, audio and multimedia content into its news pages (Featherly, 1998).

In Featherly's study (1998), MSNBC and ABC both used audio and video extensively to accompany story text. It was a practice that would only increase as Internet bandwidth improves. They all included such interactive features as instant online polls, Shockwave animations and slide-show presentations (Featherly, 1998). The advantage of online TV sites is the broadcast companies have a great access to audio and video files, although this accounts for a relatively tiny percentage of the links offered (Tremayne, 1999).

Steaming video was also something the NBC sites would offer (Greene, 2000). The station group recently penned a deal with The FeedRoom in which FeedRoom would enable all the NBC sites to deliver video clips of news, weather, traffic, sports and features to broadband customers.

MSNBC, the Web-cable partnership between NBC and Microsoft, took the first shot providing online news. It remained arguably the best ' among TV operations, only CNN was better (Featherly, 1998). But more than CNN, MSNBC has designed flash, which provided relatively deep content, and ran ahead of CBS in packaging video, audio and multimedia content into its news pages (Featherly, 1998).

According to Featherly, CBS was arguably the best among the networks at presenting video segments to augment news text. Almost all its stories were accompanied by several CBS or local affiliate video packages.

METHOD

Statistics from Jupiter Media Matrix (http://wreportus.mediametrix.com/clientCenter.html) show the top five most visited sites from August 2001 to September 2001: CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Time.com, ABCnews.com, and NYTimes.com. Each of them largely increased the number of visitors after the September 11 attacks happened.

This study will use these five as sample online news sites to explore the use of four multimedia technologies ' Windows Media, RealNetworks, Quicktime, and Macromedia Flash.

Through visiting each site and examining the coverage of the attacks, each of the following research questions will be answered:

1. What multimedia technology does the site use to cover the attacks? 2. 3. How are the technologies managed? 4. 5. What technical options does the site offer to users? 6.

FINDINGS

A critical analysis of multimedia platforms (Window Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime, and Macromedia Flash) employed by five most visited news sites (CNN, MSNBC, Time, ABCnews, and New York Times) on September 11, 2001 shows on each news organization's Web site all or some of the multimedia platforms were used to cover the terrorist attacks.

CNN.com

CNN.com produced an in-depth special package called 'Day of terror: A 21st century 'day of infamy'' for the September 11 coverage. As the most-trafficked news sites that day, CNN.com used all four multimedia platforms examined in this study.

A visually compelling image of one collapsed tower takes half size of the front page (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/day.section.html). On the left of the image, three categories, TOP STORIES, BACKGROUND, AND ARCHIVE, contain links to in-depth stories, an interactive attacks explainer, picture galleries, videos and audios.

The interactive attacks explainer is good example that today's media provide detailed and interactive information to online visitors by adopting Marcomedia Flash (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/map.html). The flash file does not include an audio file, but its combination of text and graphics bring rich content to the users. The first page shows the flying routes of three planes and has three links to different locations, New York City, Somerset County, Pa., and Washington D.C. Users can choose to go to different location for more information.

In the New York City section, two towers are designed as two dynamic links. Each one will link to a subsection that shows what happen to the tower, when it happened, a real photo, and a graphic layout that demonstrates the statistics of the crashed plane.

The Somerset County, Pa. section only has one page that provides time information, a real photo of the crash spot, and a graphic layout showing the statistics of the crashed plane. The section also has a simple map around the Somerset County area.

The Washington D.C. section also has one page. It contains a detailed map of the Pentagon's location, the flying route of American Airlines Flight 77, and a graphic illustration of the statistics of the crashed plane.

All these sections are linked together, so the user can go to any section by choice. The links on the top frame of the flash file link back to other sections of the site.

The special package page also has links that guide the user to the video/audio section (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/day.video.09.html). The video/audio section is a huge archive that stores all the video/audio clips. A calendar allows the user to jump to certain daily video/audio archive. In the archive of September 11, 32 video clips and ten audio clips cover the attacks and reactions of the eyewitnesses and government officials. All video clips come with three formats, QuickTime, RealNetworks, and Windows Media. All the audio clips are in 'wav' format and played with QuickTime Player.

MSNBC.com

MSNBC.com also designed an in-depth package for the September 11 attacks. The package front page contains 12 headlines with teasers and nine single headlines. On the right side of the page, 11 graphic links guide the user to different sections, including an interactive flash presentation and a video gallery.

This flash link on the left side of the package front page is a complete interactive coverage of the attacks called 'The Darkest Day.' A pop-up window embedded with Macromedia Player will come out after the link is clicked. The whole coverage has six sections: Terror in the skies, The attack begins, Shock & disbelief, Another wav, An icon in ruins, and Victims & heroes. The main color of the flash file is black and dark green. A male voice explains each of the six sections. Each section also has sound effects of radar, sirens, planes, etc., and sound clips from live reports.

The first part, Terror in the skies, starts with a moving radar image that has a map illustration as background. The flash designer uses two little moving green dots to demonstrate the flying routes. The section ends when the two flights hit the World Trade Center.

The second part, The attack begins, is a flash slide show of pictures that were captured in the morning of September 11. This section begins with a flashback showing people went to work as usual that morning. Coming along is the intense sound effects of crashes and bombings with audio clips from live reports that contains terrified people's screaming and crying.

Shock & disbelief is a section that reports reactions of four eyewitnesses and four politicians (Geogre W. Bush, Rudolph Giuliani, Tony Blair, and Yasser Arafat). The user can click on each person's photo, and the live-recorded voice of the person will come out.

The next section, Another Wave, looks like the first section. But it shows details about the other two hijacked flights. The male voice tells the story about crashes and victims on board called their families.

'An icon in ruins' is a section that bring details about the damaged World Trade Center area. This section has three subsections. The first one is called 'What's left.' It shows the situations of the buildings at the World Trade Center area after the two tower collapsed with a dynamic map. The user can use the mouse to point each building, and the name of the building will show up. The second on is 'Who worked there.' This section covers the names and locations of the companies in the two collapsed towers. It allows the user to click on different sections of the towers, and the name lists of the companies are displayed on the right side of the map. The third one, 'How they collapsed,' analyzes the constructional structure of the two towers with dynamic graphics to explain why and how the two towers collapsed.

The last section of this flash coverage, Victims & heroes, is another flash slide show similar to the second section. It also contains a slid show, sound effects of sirens, and audio clips from interviewing victims' relatives and rescuers.

At the bottom of the flash player's window, a graphic line contains links to five sections of the coverage. The user can does not have to view the flash in order by selecting different section by choice.

Among the 21 stories listed on the front page, four of them have flash feature with the story text. One is a flash slide show with audio (http://www.msnbc.com/news/627995.asp), and the other three are the promotion graphic linking to the flash coverage 'The Darkest Day.' Eight stories have a video feature. After the link is clicked, a pop-up window embedded with Windows Media Player will come out. Window Media is the only video format that MSNBC.com offers.

Time.com

Time.com's coverage of the attacks is a special report called 'Day of Infamy.' The main page has a photo of the tow bombing towers as background. This special report does not have any Macromedia flash feature. The only interactive feature it has is a graphic timeline of the attacks. But the timeline is a number static images connected by HTML. The package has a video gallery, but the content is directly from CNN.com.

ABCnews.com

ABCnews.com does not have a special package covering the attacks, but multimedia technologies have been largely employed in the reporting. On the front page of the site, multimedia features, video, audio and flash, are all highlighted in different sections. The right side of the page has Video, Audio, and In Detail sections that link to video, audio, and flash files of the attacks. On the left side of the page, a link called 'Video & Audio' can guide the user directly go to the Video and Audio Gallery.

In the 'In Detail' section, Macromedia Flash is used to show the four planes' paths with a detailed timeline. The flash file does not have audio. The user has the complete control by clicking the next button to view the development of the attacks.

In the 'Video/Audio' section, the subcategory called 'Sept. 11, 2001' stores all the video and audio clips related to the attacks. After a link is clicked, a pop-up window will show and ask the user to choose one of three connection speeds. The site only offers RealNetworks video as the only video format option. The player window also contains links providing the user options to change the connection speed and download the free RealPlayer 8. The left side of the window has links of different video clips. Each video clip comes with a headline and a short intro located at the right side of the window.

NYTimes.com

NYTimes.com offers a special section for the coverage of the attacks on its site (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/dayofterror/index.html). On the right side of the page, story links are sorted by date. The coverage of the September 11 attacks locates at the bottom.

Macromedia Flash is not widely used on this site. It is only used as a short ad introduction for the slid shows. Each slide show itself is either animated gif graphics or static JPEG images linked by HTML.

The video gallery is a pop-up window embedded with RealPlayer plug-in. RealNetworks video is the only video format that the site offers. The left side of the window has a headline and a short introduction of the video. It also offers two options of the connection speed. On the right side, all the links of video clips are listed. Distinguished from other sites in this study, NYTimes.com's video gallery offers a link that allows the user to download the file first as an option.

CONCLUSIONS

The use of four multimedia technologies on the new sites examined in this study can be displayed by the form below.

CNN.com, the top one most visited news site on September 11, benefits a lot from the multimedia technologies the site used. Employing all of these multimedia features provides more options for online users, so the site can solve the problems cause by different formats in media delivery and attract more visitors. This is the most important reason that made CNN.com the most trafficked news site on September 11.

MSNBC.com is the best site that takes advantage of Macromedia Flash technology among all sites. Its flash coverage, 'The Darkest Day,' is the longest and most dynamic flash presentation among all examined sites in this study. It contains animation, sound effects and audio clips from live repots. By viewing the flash features on the site, it is not difficult to feel that MSNBC.com not only focuses on bringing accurate news information to visitors, but tries to adopt many emotional elements for the coverage. Other sites' flash coverage is pure information-oriented without any emotional impact. MSNBC.com's style is unique among all five sites. It is a new approach for online news companies to advanced technology like Macromedia Flash to bring news and emotions together without losing journalism objectivity. If we say CNN.com wins by its large video/audio coverage, MSNBC.com secures its second place by its interactive media features with Macromedia Flash technology.

As to the video/audio part, it is not a surprise that the site only offers Windows Media as the only video/audio format because Microsoft partly owns MSNBC.com. Although Windows Media is widely used today because it comes with IE browsers as a pre-installed plug-in, it still causes plug-in problems for a large population of Netscape fans.

Time.com's coverage itself does not have any multimedia features examined in this study. This reveals the fact that print news sites are still mainly text-driven and lack of employing various technical features to cover stories. As a business partner of CNN.com, Time.com enjoys a great benefit from CNN.com's video/audio archives and attracted many online visitors.

ABCnews.com's online video/audio solution is using RealNetworks technology. This is a neutral way to stay away from the conflict between Windows Media from Microsoft and QuickTime from Apple. ABCnews.com does not have a special package covering the September 11 attacks. Links of the multimedia features are scattered in different parts of the sites, which makes them harder to find compared with other sites.

NYTimes.com is similar to Time.com. The site is heavily text-driven and reluctant to play with multimedia features. Compared with a large number of text links, the link of the video gallery is almost invisible.

Compared the four multimedia technologies, Macromedia Flash is the mostly used technology. This shows that online journalists have already noticed the values this technology possesses by combining text, video, audito, and animation. It also shows the trend that more and more online producers started taking advantage of this technology.

With its platform-friendly characteristic and stable functions, RealNetworks becomes the second mostly-used one among four multimedia technologies examined in this study. Favoring both sides of online users surely helps the company gain a great number of customers. Windows Media and QuickTime both function well with their own platform but might cause technical problems with different operating environment to scare users away. This is why two of five sites (ABCnews.com and NYTimes.com) use neither of them. This might be a tip for multimedia developers ' being platform-friendly is the key.

Overall, the findings of this study show that multimedia technologies are playing an important role to increase the traffic on online news sites, especially when covering the breaking news. CNN.com established a good example for online media. Making the Web more dynamic and informative by taking advantage of multimedia technologies is a research project for future journalists.

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