While this is an intriguing picture, if the person wanted hard news first, they would find that more easily on the printed first page of the same paper. The onscreen first page also included the beginning of an article about the local football team an introduction to an article about demographic shifts in local election polls.
Both papers, then, invite the reader to scan for articles of interest, but in the online version, the editor of the web page has made more decisions for the reader. Considerably less text is on the first page, probably because not everyone has markedly large computer screens that could hold a full page of text. In addition, for many people it may be easier to read on paper than online. A reproduction of the front page of a newspaper might be harder to take in than the printed version, possibly because the printed version can be manipulated to...
A click on the picture takes the reader to the article, which can be printed or emailed. At the end of the article are hyperlinks that can immediately take the reader to another article. Alternatively, the reader can use search to find previous articles on the topic. This last feature solves one problem with newspapers: it is hard for them to cover a topic in depth in one issue. Over time, however, they may have covered the topic extensively.
Serious newspaper readers may well want to use both forms: first the paper version, to browse and find things of unexpected interest, and then the online version to follow up in more detail on topics of greater interest to the reader. http://www.sptimes.com/home.shtml
