This is just part of a very thorough report in which Project for Excellence in Journalism traces trends in content, audience, economics, ownership, online trends and alternative media across major segments of the industry: newspapers, magazines, cable, solely online, television and radio. I found it interesting that despite the hemorrhaging ("amputation" level cuts) in the papers' newsrooms, that while public attention shifted to the economy in January 2008 "newspapers had already been covering the issue for months, dedicating staff, space and early attention the story when most other genres had yet to treat it as top news. Looking across 2007, newspaper front pages covered the downturn in the U.S. economy more than any of the ... More »

The article provides stimulative input, but raises many questions about how the data was gathered and valued. With media concentration, does this report overemphasize monolithic media pandering to rich shoppers? The WSJ covers economic stories and the health care industry more because they cater to rich investors, and that is the WSJ specialty. The quality and viewpoint diversity of the coverage should perhaps be the prime measure of the social good of journalism, rather than how many stories can put us to sleep. The review of radio and online ignored the diversity found there, and looked first at whether they were making money. Making money is not the prime social good, despite what my local megachurch says.

because they offer more than soundbites or quick turn-arounds, it's good to read that newspapers are in the forefront on certain areas of news, including foreign or world news. the early news on the economy shows their concern for readers. the emphasis on health care and immigration probably is related to the campaign which takes first place in the media. because they aren't mentioned much by the candidates, more front page news reports covering topics like global warming/energy as well as the inroads on our democracy would be welcome.

Factual, informative. Important to us because democracy relies on an informed public. Project for Excellence in Journalism does a good job. BUT, I wonder if it's easy to gather a reliable sample from online sources. They report that newspapers scooped the rest of the media on the failing economy, but I recall MediaChannel.org's Danny Schechter beating that drum back when I thought he must be exaggerating, because I didn't read about it in any newpapers. He produced the documentary film "In Debt We Trust." (His previous film was "Weapons of Mass Deception.")

A quantitative only approach to content examination is misleading. To understand why this isn't a good story go to http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/17/so_wrong_for_so_long_so_why_ch/#more .Here is an excerpt:Steve Vogel from the Washington Post was there, and he wrote a good piece for Saturday's paper. But the Post ran it on the front of its Metro section. The Metro section! There's not a single plausible reading of Winter Soldier as a local story. The Post did what any viewer of The Wire would recognize as the newspaper equivalent of putting McNulty on the Boat. It couldn't kill Vogel's story outright, so it slotted the piece where no one in power will ever read it. As Greg's book points out, that's exactly what the ... More »

This article reports results of surveys of media content for 2007. It provides an analysis of the distribution of coverage among different topics. The problem with the article is that, despite its length it is not clear how comprehensive the survey really was. For example, only five talk radio hosts are discussed, only three of whom had significant audiences. Were any of the many others covered?

This piece has a lot of impressive charts and graphs to show print coverage of various issues. But they did little analysis on the quality of the stories-- they mainly counted them. And the quality of the coverage is where the rubber meets the road. Election coverage, for example, has been extensive but practically worthless, focusing on the gossip and the race itself. So the reader knows little more after reading the piece than s/he did before reading it. The article also didn't show how many stories were copycat journalism. At least the print media aren't as bad as tv about inflicting us with celebrity gossip disguised as news.