MAKING STORIES MEMORABLE
By Deborah Potter & Annie Lang

It's one thing to take a television news story that doesn't make much sense and suggest changes that might help. It's quite another to make those changes based on a set of rules anyone could apply, and then to compare the first version to the new version to see if the changes really do help. That's what we did, with the help of the Institute for Communication Research at Indiana University. We took four stories submitted to NewsLab by local news stations and modified them based on seven rules for making news more understandable and more memorable. The rules were developed from an extensive review of the research literature:

Let the emotions talk. Emotions compel attention, but they're harder to process. Emotion may increase memory for a story but not for its details. Use emotion sparingly, and when the emotion is strong, keep graphics, language, and relationships simple.

Slow it down. If the story is complex, keep the pace slow to moderate and production features to a minimum.

Dare to be quiet. When the video is complex or compelling, be quiet for one or two seconds after the shot. This allows the viewer to process the video followed by the audio, and will significantly improve memory for the audio track. If both things happen at once, viewers will remember the pictures and forget the words.

Match the audio and video. When audio and video information match, understanding and memory are better.

Know how to deal with negative images. Negative pictures compel attention. Strong negative images tend to result in strong memory for the negative image, but weak memory for concurrent audio information. In addition, memory is particularly bad for audio information which precedes the negative images. On the other hand, memory is better for audio information which occurs after the negative images are no longer on screen.

Take a literal approach. Use concrete words and pictures when possible. Using words which build mental pictures may be better than using bad or semi-related video. Graphics which show relationships are better than graphics which present facts.

Use strong chronological narratives. Stories told as narrative, in chronological order, are easier to process and are better remembered than stories with weak narratives or told in non-chronological order.

To test the ability of these rules to improve understanding and memory for news stories, we produced two versions of each of four stories. Version 1 was a reproduced version of a story that had aired on a local station, with a revoiced track and standup. We did this both to remove identification with the original station, and so that both versions of the story would use the same reporter. Version 2 of each story was designed to implement the seven rules, as applicable. We rewrote the script, and created new graphics when appropriate. We used soundbites from the original story, but the pacing, order, and choice of video were changed to implement the seven rules.

In order to test whether the new versions of the stories were indeed more comprehensible and more memorable (without becoming less interesting) we showed the stories to 40 residents of a small Midwestern city between the ages of 25 and 65. Each participant saw two of the original stories, and two of the reproduced stories. While the participants were viewing the stories, we measured their heart rate and skin conductance to determine attention and arousal. Following each story participants rated it on seven 10-point scales: informative, believable, interesting, understandable, enjoyable, engaging, and important. After all four stories had been viewed participants performed an unrelated task for about ten minutes, and then wrote down what they could remember about each of the four stories. Two days later, we called the participants and them to list as many of the stories they had seen as possible.

Results:

Participants rated the reproduced news stories as more informative, comprehensible, interesting, engaging, believable, and important than the original stories. Indeed, as expected, the reproduced stories were rated significantly higher on all measures except importance.

Participants paid as much or more attention to the reproduced versions as they did to the original versions. Their heart rates were generally slower, suggesting greater attention, while watching reproduced versions as compared to original versions. There was no significant difference between skin conductance during viewing of the two versions, suggesting the reproduced versions were just as arousing as the originals.

Viewers remembered the reproduced stories better than the original versions based on immediate cued recall. We asked about facts and relationships in each story, and the scores showed that participants had significantly higher recall for reproduced versions of stories compared to original versions of stories. In addition to remembering more information from reproduced versions of stories, participants remembered more correct information and less incorrect information from the reproduced stories. When we called them back 48 hours later, participants listed the stories they could remember from the experiment. There were no significant differences between the two versions on this delayed free recall.

Conclusion

The results of this experiment suggest that applying the seven rules of good storytelling can significantly increase viewers' ability to understand and remember information from news stories without reducing levels of attention or excitement. It is important to note that the changes made in the stories are almost all post-production or writing changes. This means that these changes can be made without investing more resources in the reporting of the stories. As a result, local news stories can be made more user-friendly, more engaging, more interesting, and more comprehensible simply by applying these seven rules to constructing the final product.

1. Annie Lang is professor of Telecommunication at Indiana University and director of the Institute for Communication Research.

2. The stories were all day-of-air reporter packages, and covered the following topics: a grand jury hearing into possible influence peddling by members of a county commission; a public commission meeting to change its ethics code because of a lawsuit alleging sweetheard deals with former members; a preview of an economic summit conference; and developments in a court case involving airport landing rights.

3. These results were presented at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 12, 2000, in Phoenix, Arizona. Click here to read the full research paper.