Paper still sets the agenda for newsreaders

According to a recent University of Oregon study, readers of the print edition of the New York Times recall more than readers of the online edition. The paper explores several theories for why print still rules, Jack Shafer reports in Slate:

Online newspapers tend to give few cues about a story's importance, and the "agenda-setting function" of newspapers gets lost in the process. "Online readers are apt to acquire less information about national, international and political events than print newsreaders because of the lack of salience cues; they generally are not being told what to read via story placement and prominence—an enduring feature of the print product," the researchers write. The paper finds no evidence that the "dynamic online story forms" (you know, multimedia stuff) have made stories more memorable.