Lizard Tools: Journalism.org- The State of the News Media 2010
This is the seventh annual report from journalism.org, and anyone who is serious about news media in any format should bookmark this site. Here they cover and analyze the prevailing trends in news media both on and offline, and it’s also one of the better resources if you need to know who owns which media outlet, etc.
Here’s a representative snip from their 2010 media overview, but this is a mere taste, the site is overflowing with information for those interested in analyzing the media themselves.
Major Trends
In past years we have tried to identify major trends emerging in the coming year, and many of those still apply now. For 2010, we want to emphasize six points.
* As we learn more about both web economics and consumer behavior, the unbundling of news seems increasingly central to journalism’s future. The old model of journalism involved news organizations taking revenue from one social transaction — the selling of real estate, cars and groceries or job hunting, for example, — and using it to monitor civic life — covering city councils and zoning commissions and conducting watchdog investigations. Editors assembled a wide range of news, but the popularity of each story was subordinate to the value, and the aggregate audience, of the whole. And the value of the story might be found in its consequence rather than its popularity. That model is breaking down. Online, it is becoming increasingly clear, consumers are not seeking out news organizations for their full news agenda. They are hunting the news by topic and by event and grazing across multiple outlets. This is changing both the finances and the culture of newsrooms. When revenue is more closely tied to each story, what is the rationale for covering civic news that is consequential but has only limited interest? The data also are beginning to show a shift away from interest in local news toward more national and international topics as people have more access to such information, which may have other effects on local dynamics.