State of the News Media

The Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual report looking back on the year in media. Among the findings: while Fox News and MSNBC spent a good deal of time covering politics and domestic issues, CNN spent far more time than its competitors covering international news… and some domestic stories as well.

Fox News and MSNBC both spent a plurality of their time covering two stories: the economy, and the 2012 election. MSNBC spent nearly 30% of its newshole covering the economy, and 17% covering the election, while FNC spent 21% of its newshole on the economy and 16% on the election.

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The Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual report looking back at the year in media. Among the findings: the “CBS Evening News” and the “PBS NewsHour” differentiated themselves from the other evening newscasts in significant ways, while CBS has also been slowly adding more hard news to its morning show in advance of its January format change.

The top five stories on the network evening newscasts were the economy, unrest in the Middle East, the 2012 election, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the shooting in Tucson that included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

“Traditionally, the three broadcast networks have not had marked variations in their selection of news,” the PEJ writes in its report. “That appears to be changing. In 2011, one network appears to differentiating itself with a more hard news orientation.”

That network is CBS, which spent more time on the economy than either of its competitors, and less airtime on lifestyle, celebrity or sports stories than its competition.

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The PEJ has found coverage of the 2012 presidential race reached its second highest level of the year last week. Coverage of the primaries accounted for 27% of the newshole on 52 different media outlets from the print, online, radio, network and cable TV sectors. The Iraq War which officially came to an end last Thursday with the final troops out of the country by Sunday, accounted for just 8% of coverage.

Mediabistro.com is partnering up with Poll Position, the new polling company founded by former CNN executive Eason Jordan. On occasion, TVNewser and our other blogs will share results from Poll Position polls having to do with news media consumption and coverage. Each Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday night, Poll Position conducts national telephone polling, asking more than 1,000 Americans 10 hot topic questions in addition to demographic questions – gender, race, age, political affiliation. Among the Poll Position questions over the weekend was the following, as suggested by TVNewser:

When it comes to media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, do you believe the protests have received the right amount of TV news coverage, not enough TV news coverage, or too much TV news coverage?

Just Right	Too Much	Too Little	N/O
24.6	42.3	24.3	8.8

National Telephone Poll of 1,066 Registered Voters / 10.30.11 / Margin of Error +/- 3%

Among the overall population, the opinion seems to be that the protests are receiving too much coverage, unless you added “Just Right” and “Too Little” together and counted them as one. Those results mostly hold up among the individual demographic groups… with a few notable exceptions:

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Mediabistro.com is partnering up with Poll Position, the new polling company founded by former CNN executive Eason Jordan. On occasion, TVNewser and our other blogs will share results from Poll Position polls having to do with news media consumption and coverage. Each Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday night, Poll Position conducts national telephone polling, asking more than 1,000 Americans 10 hot topic questions in addition to demographic questions – gender, race, age, political affiliation. Among Poll Position’s questions last night was this:

When there is a major news event, do you turn to news radio stations, news websites, social media or television news networks for breaking news reporting?

TV News Networks	News Websites	News Radio	Social Media
57.5	16.6	13.8	7.7

National Telephone Poll of 1,110 Registered Voters / 10.23.11 / Margin of Error +/- 3%

TV news networks is highest among 65+ with 70% saying they get breaking news from TV. Perhaps most surprising: the highest percentage saying Social Media — at 9% — is among 45-64 year-olds. Slightly less, 8.1% of 18-29 year-olds, say they turn to Social Media for breaking news.

The full poll will be released tomorrow on Poll Position.

The economy — and more specifically the Occupy Wall Street protests — reclaimed the top spot as the most-covered news story last week, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The PEJ found 22% of last week’s newshole — on TV, radio, newspapers and websites — focused on the economy; a third of that on Occupy Wall Street.

The 2012 election was the next most-covered story, followed by the death of Steve Jobs and the acquittal of Amanda Knox.

If you can answer that question — via a video — then this is for you.

The Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School is calling on aspiring journalists, filmmakers and media consumers to help them think about the future of news. Create a video of no more than two minutes that answers the question, “What is the future of news?”

The winner gets $2,000 plus an awesome weekend at Harvard, attending the 25th anniversary gala of the Shorenstein Center.

But beware, the judges are tough: they include Rick Kaplan, former CBS, MSNBC, and CNN executive, now EP of “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” and Mark Whitaker, the former Newsweek and NBC News executive, now EVP and ME at CNN.

Here’s more on the contest, the rules and deadlines.

Only in America would an elected official call a press conference to confirm the identity of his penis.

And then have that penis knock Katie Couric off the news cycle.

After 10 consecutive days of ‘Weinergate’ coverage, I am convinced that its importance lies not with what it says about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s genitals but with what is says about us.

When the Democrat from New York yesterday manned up and admitted it was his underwear-encased, tumescent penis pictured in the notorious tweet, it gave new meaning to the phrase “member of Congress.” As he walks softly through those corridors of power, he carries a big stick.

Shooting fish in a barrel, I admit. But has there ever been such an unfortunate pairing of surname and scandal? How could anyone not gorge on double-entendres when the perp’s name is a euphemism for the very source of the imbroglio?

Simple answer: You can’t.

Weiner’s fall from grace, while titillating, reeks of pathos. Was anything noble rescued from the

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The world of cable news was healthy financially, even as ratings slipped from 2010, according to Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism 2011 “State of the Media” report, which was released today.

The PEJ report on cable news channels is worth reading in full, but here are some of the key takeaways.

The biggest takeaway is that while ratings were down across the board in 2010 for the big three cable news channels, revenues and profits were up.

Compere this chart showing overall primetime viewers for the channels:

To this one showing profits at the channels:

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2010 was an important year for the broadcast network news organizations, with radical transformations made to ensure some level as economic stability, while most of the key programs continued to see declines in viewership. That is the takeaway from the 2011 “State of the Media” report from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

PEJ’s network news report discusses at some length the efforts by ABC News and CBS News to streamline their operations in the face of a troubled economy. ABC and CBS both had substantial layoffs in their news divisions last year.

The report also looks at the evening newscasts, network morning shows and newsmagazines, and finds than nearly all were down in most measures compared to the previous year.

As the report notes, that is part of a trend going back 30 years, with the evening newscasts facing the most precipitous decline:

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