This study builds the constructs of three kinds (four types) of gated news to explore how online users pay attention to three online mainstream news sites by defining online users from marketing, democratic, and technological perspectives. Editors’ news cues, people-gated news cues, and news characteristics of four types of gated news are examined in explaining online users’ most popular news attention. The results show that several news types contain distinctive news characteristics; in addition, editors’ news cues, peoples’ news cues, and news characteristics significantly explain online users’ news attention. / text