In the last presidential campaign, journalists were responsible for only 27% of the information that voters heard about the candidates — while nearly 50% came from the politicians themselves.
Who runs the news cycle? Who controls the flow of information? Watch this video for a 5-minut explanation of how the role of the press has changed.
In 2012 LA Weekly surpassed the Village Voice to become the largest circulating alt-weekly in the U.S. Our State of the News Media website has more just-released numbers on circulation for newspapers and magazines here.
Where do you get your news?
From a newspaper? Television? The radio? From a digital source, like social media or a news site? Perhaps all of the above.
In 2012, 39% of respondents got news online or from a mobile device “yesterday,” (the day before they participated in the survey) up from 34% in 2010.
Though “traditional” media may be declining as a primary source for news, online news has been on an incline since 2006. A further breakdown shows that 19% of respondents got news from social media and 16% did so from e-mail, while 8% said they’d listened to a podcast.
More digital developments from the State of the News Media report: http://pewrsr.ch/114ozuY
NPR Talk of the Nation: As Consumers Jump Ship, News Outlets Shift Priorities
(featuring Amy Mitchell, acting director, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism)
Americans are abandoning their long-trusted news outlets in high numbers. According to a Pew Research Center report, 31 percent of Americans say they have deserted a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the information they want.
The New York Times’ take on this year’s State of the News Media report:
With shorter stories and scarce coverage of politics and government, local television newscasts in the United States, like local newspapers before them, are suffering from “shrinking pains,” according to thePew Research Center.
“This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands,” the report’s main author, Amy Mitchell, wrote in an introduction.
Our tenth annual STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA report:
In the news media, a continued erosion of reporting resources has converged with growing opportunities for newsmakers, such as political figures, government agencies, companies and others, to take their messages directly to the public.
The impact has ranged from newspapers where cutbacks in newsroom staffs have put industry employment down 30% since 2000, to local television where news stories have shrunk in length and sports, weather and traffic now account for 40% of the content.
The report says this adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into
emerging ones or to question information put into its hands.
If you’re also on Twitter, follow the discussion at this hashtag:#Stateofthemedia
Four Revenue Success Stories in Newspapers — What’s working? How are they doing it? Can they help save the industry?
Check out the tactics and strategy used by these innovative editors and publishers in our infographic.
Read the full report here.
What did the Te’o Manti Hoax Reveal About the Media?
via the Herald Tribune:
Mark Jurkowitz, the associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism who has spent two decades covering the news media, said during a phone interview Thursday that one of the reasons the real story likely fell through the cracks was because sports journalists are not by nature very good at investigative work.
“That’s not really where their expertise lies,” he said. “The fact that the steriods scandal went unreported by so many for so long” is an example of that, he said.
With the election less than two weeks away, Americans are following the presidential campaign more closely on nearly every news platform than they were earlier in the year, including print newspapers.
- The biggest gains have come on the internet-both to the websites of traditional news sources and those native to the web.
- Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are growing especially rapidly as a source of political news. The number of Americans who say they regularly go to these destinations to learn about the campaign has doubled since January. Even with that jump, however, these leading social media platforms are still turned to by a relatively limited number of Americans, about 17% in all, when those who mentioned at least one of those platforms are combined.
- When asked which sources of campaign news had been “most useful,” nearly half of Americans named television in one of its various forms. Cable news was first on that list, named as the most useful source by 24%; a little more than a quarter volunteered various forms of the internet, while a third as many named local or national newspapers (8%) or radio (6%).
"We continue to see building evidence that people are using these devices to add to their news consumption. People are finding a way to continue to fit more and more news into their day. The more gadgets you have, the more news you tend to get."
— Amy Mitchell, Deputy Director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, quoted in Folio Magazine piece from a panel discussion at Advertising Week.
New “Future of Mobile News” study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism in collaboration with The Economist Group finds half of U.S. adults have access to the mobile internet, with big implications for news consumption.
- Now 22% own some kind of tablet computer (up from 11% a year ago) and smart phone ownership is up to 44% from 35%. Fully 64% of tablet owners and 62% of smart phone owners use the devices for news at least weekly.
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68% of tablet-owning adults got their tablet in the last year, likely due to the advent of the lower-priced tablets in late 2011. Just over half (52%) report owning an iPad, compared with 81% ayear ago. Android-based devices, predominantly the Kindle Fire, make up most of the rest of the ownership. iPad owners, however, use their tablet more often in general and more often for news.
- Getting news remains an important part of what people use their mobile devices for – 64% of tablet owners and 62% of smartphone owners use the devices for news at least weekly, tying news with other popular activities such as email and play
ing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones (not including talking on the phone).
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This means fully a third of all U.S. adults now get news on a mobile device at least once a week.
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Rather than replacing old technology, the introduction of new devices and formats is creating a new kind of “multi-platform” news consumer.
"Conventions are the time when voters really tune in. Even with the reduced air time the TV networks now give them, conventions bring a spike in attention. Social media is likely to magnify that this year in the same way that it whetted TV audiences’ appetites for this summer’s other big event, the London Olympics."
— Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, in a Huffington Post piece “Watching the Show: Are Conventions Still Relevant?”
