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Hypermedia has the potential to increase the number of information sources and to improve science communication by facilitating public debate. However, hypermedia reading leads to difficulties, such as disorientation, for a number of readers. We investigated a corpus of hypermedia reports from online science magazines in light of ergonomic recommendations based on the results from experimental studies. We found that most publications showed poor readability and did not follow the published recommendations. An experiment involving 59 readers and one popular science report from our initial corpus published in print and hypertext versions confirmed our first observations and allowed us to identify sources of difficulty. Hypertext readers showed poorer comprehension performance and higher perception of cognitive load. Satisfaction, though, was as high for hypertext and paper readers. The present study shows significant results in favor of the print version, but no a priori rejection of the technology on the part of readers. We conclude with some suggestions to improve the readability of online science magazines.