The New Yorker, which publishes its own news quiz occasionally has a goal of sharing factual information. Usually, the theme of these news quizzes are political or focused on softer, pop-cultural news. Because of this, there is a focus on humor in both topic and in question construction, typical of written pieces in the magazine. As a point of fact, the New Yorker considers these news quizzes as part of their "humor" section, even though the facts included are referenced and explained in the answers.

Quizzes of a different form appear in popular magazines. One example are the quizzes used in girls and women's magazines (such as the eponymous "Cosmo Quiz") where a set of questions is ostensibly used to define the test taker in some social category such as "What Kind of Sexy Are You?". In its construction, it is similar to an Aptitude Test meant to tell students what careers to consider. Unlike news quizzes, their function is exploration or definition as opposed to conveying factual knowledge. However, these same sort of quizzes have been employed popularly to "show" a participant's political or economic leanings, such as the one on the site The Political Compass, which has received media attention from several journalistic entities.

An interesting, if snarky, hybrid of the above forms is a recent Wonkette quiz about Rahm Emanuel. Formally, it adopts a similar style as the Cosmo Quiz in that it predicts which one of the Emanuel Brothers you are. However, the primary purpose is to teach readers about Rahm Emanuel and both his past work in Chicago and the Clinton administration and his personality, working in various tropes such as "middle child syndrome" as factoid that may be useful in understanding who Rahm Emanuel is.

Another key example is NPR's Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!, a radio program. The game takes the form of a panel show and tests the panel, the weekly guest, and callers on events of the news and on general trivia, usually from a recently released book. The form is very conversational, with no prizes awarded, except a voicemail message by the game's announcer, Carl Kasell. This fits in with the nature of the show as intelligent weekend entertainment, usually fitting in with other NPR shows like Car Talk and This American Life.

A digital example is  Jellyvision's Daily Dis or Dat, which took the idea of a daily piece of news and creates a trivia game around the news item, introducing more game-like elements, such as a time limit and a point scores and associated leader boards. Another element that makes this type of quiz exciting is the biting commentary by the quiz's host, Cookie. While the game focuses strictly on trivia tangentially related to the news item, it still offers a way that news quizzes can be made more exciting.

All this points to the quiz as a rich source for news games, especially those whose purpose is to ensure factual information is transmitted to players, show a transparency of information, and make the news interesting. The current news quiz is being utilized only as a means of presenting a laundry list of facts. While the New York Times quiz aims to teach people how to go about acquiring and possibly synthesizing information, it doesn't ask the user much more than to remember the facts. As such, in examining ways to add to the news quiz, we should look at ways to enable more detailed analysis and synthesis of facts into useful information for our society.