How much time can we expect our readers to give us?

I had an "ah ha!" moment some years ago when I learned that the average American reads about 200 words per minute (sometimes called ART, or Average Reading Time).

My students and I began discussing coverage in terms that focused more on our readers (and less on page design), with the most fundamental question being: how much time will a kid be able to spend on any particular article? After all, few schools stop everything to allow students to read the latest issue of the printed paper, and online pieces face stiff competition from all the wonders of the Internet. No one kid will likely have time to read everything in a particular issue, nor even want to.

We once did a little survey that revealed that very few students spent more than 20 minutes reading the paper the day it came out, and most of that was wedged in during lunch or at the end of a class. (BTW: The Oregonian once ran a subscription campaign, claiming reading the paper was "the best 15 minutes of your day," so 20 minutes wasn't terrible.)

That was alarming, as we often were publishing 32 tabloid pages. We had various reasons for not reducing our page count, but the disconnect between the sheer volume of material we were publishing and our readers' available time meant we had to devote ourselves to providing "something for everyone, and making sure we design to attract readers browsing for something of interest." That same survey revealed that few students returned to the paper in the next 2-3 days to read more, which would be similar to "time shifting" your favorite TV show and watching later. Our readers were not "time shifting" their reading of the paper.

I suspect those survey results from 10 years ago resemble student media reading habits today.

Anyway, my students and I began talking about coverage in terms of "minutes readers might spend" on something they see. We became comfortable discussing whether a piece was a two-minute story (400 words) or a four-minute story (800 words). Sometimes we opted for 1,200 words or their equivalent. That's asking for six minutes, and concentrated minutes, at that.

Many times (most of the time?), the information warranted less than a minute, leading to more quick reads and alternatives to text.

You and your students might find it fun and instructive to play with the idea of how many minutes a reader might spend on the various stories in your next issue, and then work backward to assign words/space.

BTW, the above is 422 words, or a two-minute read, probably pushing most online readers beyond the time they can afford to devote to any one post. Sorry. It also is just over 2,300 keystrokes, so you could also think of this as a 17-tweet "storm."