  During the COVID-19 pandemic, people sought information through digital news
platforms. To investigate how to design these platforms to support users' needs
in a crisis, we conducted a two-week diary study with 22 participants across
the United States. Participants' news-consumption experience followed two
stages: in the \textbf{seeking} stage, participants increased their general
consumption, motivated by three common informational needs -- specifically, to
find, understand and verify relevant news pieces. Participants then moved to
the \textbf{sustaining} stage, and coping with the news emotionally became as
important as their informational needs. We elicited design ideas from
participants and used these to distill six themes for creating digital news
platforms that provide better informational and emotional support during a
crisis. Thus, we contribute, first, a model of users' needs over time with
respect to engaging with crisis news, and second, example design concepts for
supporting users' needs in each of these stages.
