The State of the News Media 2007
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) just released their fourth annual report on the State of the News Media, a comprehensive study on the status of American journalism.
Its goal is to gather in one place as much data as possible about all the major sectors of journalism, to identify trends, mark key indicators, note areas for further inquiry and provide a resource for citizens, journalists, and researchers.
Don’t miss the “Testing Ground” flash feature allowing you to visually analyze news outlets:
Get started with the introduction to the overview.
With fundamentals shifting, we sense the news business entering a new phase heading into 2007—a phase of more limited ambition. Rather than try to manage decline, many news organizations have taken the next step of starting to redefine their appeal and their purpose based on diminished capacity. Increasingly outlets are looking for “brand” or “franchise” areas of coverage to build audience around.
For some, the new brand is what Wall Street calls “hyper localism” (consider the end of foreign bureaus at the Boston Globe or the narrowing of the coverage area at the Atlanta Journal Constitution). For others, it is personality and opinion (note the rising ratings of Lou Dobbs or Keith Olbermann). For still others it is personal involvement (the brand of Anderson Cooper, and, more tentatively and occasionally, even broadcast network anchors). For an emerging cohort of Web sites it is the involvement of everyday people (some alternative news sites now come closer than ever to the promise of authentic citizen media).
In a sense all news organizations are becoming more niche players, basing their appeal less on how they cover the news and more on what they cover.
The consequences of this narrowing of focus involve more risk than we sense the business has considered. Concepts like hyper localism, pursued in the most literal sense, can be marketing speak for simply doing less. Branding can also be a mask for bias. Handled badly, the new strategy might also render a big city metro paper irrelevant. The recent history of the news industry is marked by caution and continuity more than innovation. The character of the next era, far from inevitable, will likely depend heavily on the quality of leadership in the newsroom and boardroom. If history is a guide, (be it Adolph Ochs, Ted Turner, or Google) it will require renegades and risk-takers to break from the conventional path and create new directions.
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