You won't want to miss this! The STATE OF THE MEDIA 2008, a report on the health of the American news industry, has recently been released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Nearly 100 pages of original research and aggregated statistical data are available online here
The PEJ began this series of annual reports in 2004, recognizing that "journalism is in the midst of an epochal transformation, as momentous probably as the invention of the telegraph or television." By 2007 the reports’ authors would upgrade this judgment, suggesting that we are witnessing a transformation that rivals the printing press itself in its magnitude.
There’s more, of course......so if you’re among the concerned public left wondering what has happened to the Fourth Estate, please follow!
Each report detailing this transformation of the news industry includes hundreds of measurable aspects of journalism.
Reporting on such trends as
* staff cutbacks
* a thinning news product
* the diminishing role of journalism as "gatekeeper"
of what citizens know
* the merging of old media with new media online
* the budding of citizen journalism
* the collapse of a two hundred year old business model
(of news gathering subsidized by advertising)
-- and more, these State of the Media reports are a growing source of helpful data for news industry leaders and journalism students, as well as the rest of us.
Each report includes a narrative account of the conditions in eight different "segments" of journalism:
* newspapers,
* magazines,
* ethnic papers,
* online journalism,
* radio, and
* local tv, network tv, and cable tv,
Various factors looked at for each segment include (but are not limited to): content analysis, audience, economics, ownership, and news investment.
In the first report in 2004 the PEJ leaders identified what they see as both hopeful and worrisome in this "epochal transformation."
Noting an obvious advantage in that, "quality news and information are more available" and that "some people will likely become better informed than they once could have been as they drill down to original sources," they counter with the worry about an equal proliferation of the "trivial, the one-sided, and the false," and the danger of the news consumer becoming "steeped in the sensational and the diverting."
They argue for a new role of the journalist as a referee:
"The journalist’s role as intermediary, editor, verifier and synthesizer, is weakening, and citizens do have more power to be proactive with the news. But most people will likely do so only episodically. And the proliferation of the false and misleading makes the demand for the journalist as referee, watchdog and interpreter all the greater.
This theme -- that opportunities presented by new open technologies are mixed with the danger of their misuse -- is one that runs through all the early reports. In the 2006 report, the good news about citizen input that "expands the public forum and enriches the range of voices," is followed by this caution:
Yet the changes will probably also make it easier for power to move in the dark. And the open technology that allows citizens to speak will also help special interests, posing as something else, to influence or even sometimes overwhelm what the rest of us know.
The worry is not the wondrous addition of citizen media, but the decline of full-time professional monitoring of powerful institutions.
In fact the decline of the "full-time professional press" is well documented in these same reports, showing how the failure of news industry leaders to invest in the human resources of news gathering -- reporters -- has contributed inevitably to a
thinning of the product and a consistent narrowing of the range of topics and stories that get covered.
Another persistent theme in the reports is the concern about how journalism will be funded in the future as it moves online and product advertising fails to follow it. It is becoming clearer that advertising, especially large, expensive display ads accompanying news stories will not play the role of supporting partner that it has traditionally played in print.
Advertising is changing as much as is journalism itself. Those who have products to sell are found online through ‘search’ and not through display ads accompanying news stories. Journalists are left needing to reinvent not only their profession, but their business model as well.
The introduction to the new 2008 report begins on a grim note: "The state of the American news media is more troubled than a year ago." But it manages to end with some fresh signs for optimism. After being slow and reluctant to invest in the new technologies, the large American media companies have finally begun to show interest in their online operations, and a willingness to innovate.
The report describes a stubborn optimism that financial footing will be found somehow and a new sense that news companies – by adding better links to outside sites and by welcoming reader input – are reconnecting with their audience...."something we could not have even said a few years ago," the report concludes.
The 2008 report also offers a unique look at citizen media including social networking, blogging, Wikipedia as a news source, and a review of 64 citizen journalism sites in 15 metropolitan areas.
In 2007 a special section on digital journalism featured a detailed look at 38 news sites of which four were blogs -- including a flattering review of Daily Kos.
There’s so much in the State of the News Media reports to interest all of us here working to improve our democracy. Trusted sources of information are critical to our goals and dreams.