News stories constructed to a narrative format are easier for young people to comprehend, write Katharina Emde, Christoph Klimmt and Daniela Schlütz, all of Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. They had 706 adolescents, aged between 12 and 17, read different types of news stories and then gauged how well they had understood and retained the information.

The same information, when presented in a causal-chronological order was for some easier to understand. This effect applied to those youths, who had self-appraised their knowledge of the topic especially poor. The subjects who felt being moderate to well informed understood both narrative and inverted pyramid types of stories just as well, the authors noticed.

The findings we published as an online-first article of the journal Journalism Studies. It can be accessed online here (abstract public).