the state of the news media, 2011

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just released its State of the News Media Report for 2011, and what the authors found is that it's good -- and it's not. While revenues have increased for almost all media over the past two years, newspaper revenues are still on a decline -- though the authors report that in most cases, cutbacks have ended.

What's most interesting is this finding: While news organizations still produce the content (what we used to call news), it's the tech folks who control its distribution. Which may or may not be a little bit scary. Here's a taste:

In the digital space, the organizations that produce the news increasingly rely on independent networks to sell their ads. They depend on aggregators (such as Google) and social networks (such as Facebook) to bring them a substantial portion of their audience. And now, as news consumption becomes more mobile, news companies must follow the rules of device makers (such as Apple) and software developers (Google again) to deliver their content. Each new platform often requires a new software program. And the new players take a share of the revenue and in many cases also control the audience data.

That data may be the most important commodity of all. In a media world where consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it, the future will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user. That knowledge — and the expertise in gathering it — increasingly resides with technology companies outside journalism.

In the 20th century, the news media thrived by being the intermediary others needed to reach customers. In the 21st, increasingly there is a new intermediary: Software programmers, content aggregators and device makers control access to the public. The news industry, late to adapt and culturally more tied to content creation than engineering, finds itself more a follower than leader shaping its business.

Meanwhile, the pace of change continues to accelerate. Mobile has already become an important factor in news. A new survey released with this year’s report, produced with Pew Internet and American Life Project in association with the Knight Foundation, finds that nearly half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device. What they turn to most there is news that serves immediate needs – weather, information about restaurants and other local businesses, and traffic. And the move to mobile is only likely to grow. By January 2011, 7% of Americans reported owning some kind of electronic tablet. That was nearly double the number just four months earlier.

The migration to the web also continued to gather speed. In 2010 every news platform saw audiences either stall or decline — except for the web. Cable news, one of the growth sectors of the last decade, is now shrinking, too. For the first time in at least a dozen years, the median audience declined at all three cable news channels.

For the first time, too, more people said they got news from the web than newspapers. The internet now trails only television among American adults as a destination for news, and the trend line shows the gap closing. Financially the tipping point also has come. When the final tally is in, online ad revenue in 2010 is projected to surpass print newspaper ad revenue for the first time. The problem for news is that by far the largest share of that online ad revenue goes to non-news sources, particularly to aggregators.

You can also go here to download a podcast of an interview with Tom Rosenstiel on Wednesday's Forum on San Francisco's NPR station, 88.5 FM. bk

arianna steps up

Huffington Post announced yesterday that it is launching an investigative journalism project, similar to ProPublica, that will be funded by several philanthropic entities. The initial budget of $1.75 million "should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief."

Stories produced by the project would be available for free to any news media once the pieces have been posted on HuffPo.

From the article:

Huffington said she hoped to encourage others to fund similar ventures. Foundation spending to support journalists is a promising trend, although the money set aside for such ventures represents far less than what a newspaper would spend to thoroughly cover a community, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Foundation-based journalism will also require organizations to prove that situations are being looked at with a truly open mind, a larger burden than that faced by newspapers, he said.

The Huffington Post skews liberal, but its founder promised that the work done by the investigative fund would be nonpartisan. The group would be discredited quickly if it puts out faulty information, said Nick Penniman, the fund's executive director.

"We care about democracy, not Democrats," he said.

will the kids please stand up

More.

First I read this: A piece in Salon.com entitled "why teach journalism". What I liked about Cary Tennis' reply to the query from a long-time J-teacher was the following:

As to the conventions of story form and lingo that are often taught in journalism school, and as to the many artifacts and customs that make up our lore, we are tradespeople and we are proud of what we know how to do. We like our tools and our lingo. But we must be smart and nimble, and if we remain sentimentally attached to the artifacts of our trade in the face of massive technological change, then we are no better than GM.

So I do not think it is such a terrible thing that your journalism students are entering an uncertain world. It's the kind of world that is ripe for enterprising journalists. It is the kind of world that needs to be reported on and explained.

Where information is kept hasn't changed all that much. The information is still in people's heads and in official records. How to get it remains much the same.

Leave it to your students to create new modes for the buying and selling of this information. Their generation will do this. I feel confident about that.

Teach them how to find out what is true and what is hidden, and how to say it so others can understand what it means and why it is important. Then you will have done your job and given them the gift of a lifetime.

It parallels what I have long thought about teaching j classes: it's about the values, the principles, the news judgment, the ethics, the reporting. While inverted pyramids and podcasts and sound slides and 60-second videos go in and out of vogue, it's the mission rather than the razzle-dazzle that matters most. And that's what we teach. Or should. Kids end up going into journalism because they believe in it -- not because they like to write or shoot video. They will be the ones to redefine the business of it. I wrote about this in a long research review several years ago -- before the industry began to implode. My point:

Indeed, as the mediascape morphs at breakneck speed, what's state-of-the-art technique today may well be obsolete tomorrow. Clearly, the journalists who will succeed amidst the swirling change as well as assert leadership in taking their institution forward will be those whose journalism education taught them to think critically about journalism

And so then I read this: A piece from Time.com on the future of journalism via the latest Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism report. The report is nothing if not pessimistic. It starts with this: "If the news agenda was narrow in 2007, it constricted considerably more in 2008..."

Time.com summarizes the highlights (no irony intended) of the report, all of it dismal, but ends on a somewhat positive note:

... as the authors of this report make clear, there is no magic bullet. But if the solutions aren't obvious, the report's overall message is: Will the future leaders of journalism please, please stand up.

It's all about the kids. See above. bk

no such thing as bad ink

A funny thing happened while the Republicans were setting up the so-called elite media as enemy number one: The McCain-Palin ticket took complete control of the news agenda. According to The Project for Excellence in Journalism Coverage Index for last week, Sarah Palin dominated campaign coverage, even earning more press than her running mate. Her selection itself and her acceptance speech garnered the most coverage at 28 percent. Family issues came in at 10 percent, while stories about her public record scored 6 percent. Whether the coverage was positive or negative, it had one desired effect for the McCain camp: it knocked Obama off page one.

According to the report:

"Sarah Palin, the first woman on a Republican ticket, was the focus of feverish attention as the media tried to find out more about her, convey her record and biography, and calculate her impact on the race. For the week of Sept. 1-7, Palin was a significant or dominant factor in 60% of the campaign stories, according to the Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. McCain was fairly close behind, a significant or dominant factor in 52% of the stories.

Put another way, Palin enjoyed more coverage as a VP candidate during the GOP convention than Obama did a week earlier when he became the first person of color to accept the nomination for president of a major party. With the other ticket making most of the news, Obama was a focus in 22% of the stories last week, by far his lowest week of coverage in the general election season. His running mate Joe Biden registered at 2%."

we are our own editors.

People might be changing their patterns of how they get their news, but not necessarily where, writes Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Commenting on the latest PEW survey on news audiences -- he calls it "the on demand culture" -- he writes:

"This new culture, however, appears to differ from what some technology pioneers imagined. Citizens are not, generally, becoming their own journalists, replacing news professionals. The numbers for that are strikingly limited.

"Instead, already in large numbers, people are becoming their own editors, checking for news throughout the day, hunting through links and aggregators to find what they want, sorting among many sources, while also looking for overviews of what’s new today—and sharing what they find with friends.

"In short, news consumption is shifting from being a passive act—tell me a story—to a proactive one—answer my question."

He notes that people still rely on traditional news outlets -- but in digital form. Those that generate the highest audiences are still the sites connected to "old brands" and also sites that "aggregate" stories from, well, traditional sources.

The plot thickens. Or does it? And where do blogs fit? Is there a spectrum?

BTW, be sure to check out yesterday's comments and keep the conversation going. I am off to the Sun Valley Writer's Conference -- sure to be a humbling experience. Catch you next week. bk