The new eye track study says that online readers will read a longer news story more in depth.
Be careful not to read too much into that. It merely says that once a reader decides to read a longer story online, he will spend more time with it than a print reader.
It doesn’t say longer stories will get more readers, or that longer stories will help you grow online audience.
The web is intention driven. It’s a pull medium. So, when a user make a decision to spend some time with a story, of course he is going to read it more in depth.
In several years of watch news site web stats, I’ve observed that shorter is better. Long, in-depth stories rarely drive the number of page views that easy to digest pieces do. Frequent updates and of short items will grow audience. Long stories, not so much.
