As news organizations increasingly rely on the Internet for disseminating content, understanding how best to package that content rises in importance. This study attempts to isolate the qualities of effective online news reports through an experiment that tests the impact of three different online news formats upon a set of dependent variables identified in prior research. Building upon previous research, three different presentations were created for two different news stories: a text-only version, a version with the same text plus subheads and photos, and a version with the same text plus subheads and video. Results included strong relationships among perceived appearance, perceived cognitive impact, and perceived value of the story. Time spent viewing a story was strongly correlated with recall, but there was no relationship between the format of the story and the subjective evaluations or recall. Some suggestions for packaging and presenting news in online formats are presented.