One of studies presented at the Future of Journalism conference looked at the practice of updating stories on news websites.
Kostas Saltzis from the University of Leicester looked at how the news story was changing, given a 24/7 news cycle in an online environment when a story can be constantly updated.
He studied the news sites of several UK newspapers such as the Guardian and the Times, and broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC.
Saltzis found that the first drafts of stories and initial updates were very brief. A quarter of updates took place within half an hour of publication, with the figure rising to 60% of updates for the first two hours.
But it was extremely rare for stories to be updated beyond a single day, suggeting the daily news cycle remained in place.
In fact, half of stories finalised with four hours of publication.
Significant differences emerged between newspapers and broadcasters. For example, BBC journalists would spend 6 jours and 28 minutes updating a story compared to Telegraph journalists who spent 2 hours 18 minutes.
Updates were more frequent and intense in broadcasters while newspapers tended to be slower and less frequent in the updating process.
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