Message From Michael -- State of News Media - 2nd Edition - March 31, 2008

THE STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA – 2ND EDITION




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FOREWORD: There was so much information in the State of the News Media report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that, as promised last week, I had to do more. After all, boiling 180,000 words into 1,500 or so last week and 2,000 or so this week still means my summary is only 1.5% of the total. So no doubt distortions abound, but here goes.

THE HEADLINES: (Or, the basic points). Despite declines in ratings, Local TV news remains “one of the few sources of news that continues to be popular.” Despite drops in circulation, “print pages… still provided information that was harder to find elsewhere.” Despite the growth of Online news, “there are increasing concerns about the Web’s ability to meet the news industry’s financial challenges.” Despite audience drop-offs in 2006, Cable TV experienced growth again in 2007 but instead of spikes from major events as in the past, the growth has been in prime time programming “built around a cast of hosts.” The Network evening newscast numbers fell yet again with the ‘decline accelerating’ and the Network morning ‘news’ also fell for the third year in a row with a ‘general decline’ in network offerings. Newspapers are not dead because “print readership is not falling as fast as print circulation” thanks in part to new measurement tools; but with a demographic decline in print use newspapers will continue migrating to the younger-skewing Online product. News remains an important part of Radio with an impressive following (93.3% of all those over the age of 12 in the U.S.) although it has been falling slightly.

THE FACTOIDS: (Or, things I found interesting). Of all the news media categories, the Internet has the greatest amount of, and focus on, International News. This may have been obvious to the many people smarter than me, but the reason is the global reach of Internet operations like Google, Yahoo and AOL. But it also appears to apply to Online news-sites affiliated with established news networks, like MSNBC, ABCNews.com and CBSNews.com. The report, as noted before, re-emphasizes the importance of newspapers as primary news gatherers for all media and cites, in particular, how newspapers were focusing on the economy months before other news organizations jumped on the bandwagon. The other two issues that were strengths of newspapers were their focus on health care policy and the greater geographic range of coverage involving foreign affairs not involving the U.S. In the Cable news arena, it was probably obvious (again, to everybody but me) but still struck me as insightful that the hosts were a strong, if not primary factor, in setting the news agenda, to the point that there were significant differences in news selection even when it was the same Cable news operations. The report makes the observation that Network news are the last place in television news where the correspondent is a key participant in the newscast “which is build around their written, vetted and produced story packages where words and pictures are carefully matched” as opposed to most other television news which have moved toward “more extemporaneous news delivery.”

THE IMMEDIATE POSSIBILITIES: (Or, trends and what’s happening now). In Local TV, the report notes many stations are opting for different times for their early evening news such as 4pm and 7pm in large part because people either are not home, eating dinner or opting not to watch during the traditional dinner hour. In fact the report says there is a general drop off in people watching any TV (local or network), not just news. The study analysis says the same drop-off occurring between 5pm and 7pm is also occurring at 4pm and 7pm while the morning news audience is at least holding on to its audience. The report recommends Local TV capitalize on its strengths of “content and reach” as it battles with new technology. On the radio side, the report says “the audience for what was once called radio is rising and fragmenting.” It uses the phrase ‘what was once called radio’ because of the different delivery technologies. In the Online news world, the report cites the growth in Online video use following the growth in Broadband accessibility although it notes there are conflicting studies about just how much growth there is. Interestingly enough, the report cites a Dow Jones study that more venture capital money is being invested into online video ventures, maybe because (citing other studies) ‘everyone, with the exception of young adults’ is interested in Online video. All the studies also agree that news beats out comedy, movies, music and sports. In Newspapers, not surprisingly, the report just re-emphasized the trend to a print-online combination which, the report noted, reaches three-quarters of adults “one way or the other.” It also noted though that many newspapers are trimming down the geographic distribution of their print product into ‘distant areas.’ It should be noted that the Big Dailies’ free newspapers that were hailed in previous reports as a future trend are dying off.

THE LONG-TERM POSSIBILITIES: (Or, ideas weird and wonderful). It starts with a big “IF”, but the report says the survival of the network news divisions may depend on them “liberating themselves from the broadcast television platform on which they were founded and even perhaps from the networks themselves.” Instead, the report says the Network news divisions may be better able to survive as “video newsgathering organizations” who supply their products on demand on many platforms, not just broadcast television. The reason for the “if” is the premise that the problems of network news may be attributable to the decline in the overall audience of broadcast network television rather than there being anything ‘wrong’ with the actual newscasts themselves. On the Radio side of the equation, the report has some similar equivocations before offering the idea of Cell Phone Radio as the New Frontier and potential future audio format in addition to AM/FM, HD Radio, Satellite Radio, Podcasting and even wireless Internet radio. The report says it is hard to ignore the fact that we have become a “cell phone nation” with four out of five people subscribed to some type of wireless service and a third expressing interest in cell radio (of course that leaves two-thirds not interested). The report, of course, focuses on the migration of the Newspaper product to the Internet, but it also raises the idea of a hybrid platform version with a three or four day print edition for weekends when people have more time and interest in reading newspapers and the advertising inserts, coupled with an Online edition during the work week when people have less time and, to some extent, less interest. On the Internet, the report talks about “disaggregation” with Widgets (mentioned in previous MfM’s) using embedded coding bringing in live content from third-party sites. The reasoning is that Websites need to get away from the “walled garden” mentality of creating restrictive Websites that are so site-centric that they don’t recognize the ‘side door’ ways people get to their site (primarily links and search). In Local television, the report notes the “fair amount” of movement toward multi-media and cites as a trend to watch, stations assembling Website newscasts “to offer the latest developments online.”

THE QUOTES: In the Online news world, the study authors say the three keywords describing the climate are – assimilation, acquisition and partnership – as major media players scramble to capture some of the growing audience for news sites. In a similar style of Three’s, the report says Radio is, “at its core, a medium of three P’s – personality, persuasion and polarization” with news events “run through an ideological filter used to create a narrative about good guys and bad guys.” What may be my favorite quote of the report was on newspapers which the study authors say, “are still far from dead, but the language of the obituary is creeping in.” In Cable TV, “more than any other medium we have studied, the definition of news depends on the outlet.” (And in case you’re wondering, it was MSNBC for politics, Fox for crime and CNN for foreign policy.) And in the category of ‘do-you-think?’ the report says Local TV, challenged by cable, satellite and mobile devices, “is beginning to take the Internet more seriously.”

THE ODDITIES: (Or, the huh?, of the report). In all of the media categories there is a content analysis sub-section… except for Local TV which had no content analysis. When I queried the folks at PEJ, a content analyst for the group said it was because it was “a very difficult sector to monitor… (that) is costly and logistically challenging” although he notes they did do one in 2000 and other members of the PEJ staff have written a book, “We Interrupt This Newscast” which looks at local news. Equally puzzling (to me at least) it seems (again, to me at least) that the report spends more time talking about HD Radio than it does on HDTV. In a similar vein, the report spends an inordinate amount of ink on Katie Couric, with very little comment about the other network anchors. Interestingly the report notes that Couric, who was noted for her signature interviews, is actually doing half the number of on-set interviews as her rivals, now that CBS has revised the program. The report says its study of network TV was the most comprehensive to date, but as an observation (disclaimer – personal opinion) the network TV section had a lot of just ‘gossip’ reporting about personalities, it seemed to me. The report notes that the traditional 22-minute news-hole on the half-hour evening news has shrunk to 18.9 minutes on NBC, 18.7 minutes on CBS and 18.1 minutes on ABC. The report says there are two distinct parts of the Cable TV News Day – daytime focused on crime and celebrity and night-time focused on controversial topics that “suits the particular audience that tunes in to each channel.” And, again in the category of things I didn’t think of, but other people smarter than me probably did… the report cites as one of the reasons for the decline in newspaper circulation the federal Do Not Call legislation which has tripled the cost of phone solicitation for newspaper subscriptions.

THE DISCLAIMER: My Message normally comes out on Monday mornings, but this is late because a) I wanted to get a response from PEJ about the Local TV content analysis and, more to the point, b) there is an awful lot of information to assimilate… and I’m still assimilating it.

CONGRATULATIONS: Only tangentially related to state of the news media report, the Peabody Awards were announced this week – another excuse for my report being late. Congratulations to my friends at WSLS in Roanoke for their coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy as well as the folks at WFAA in Dallas which won a Peabody for their FOUR investigative pieces looking at everything from the U.S. import-export bank to the police department that “got too cozy” with the TV sexual predator sting operation. Congratulations also to WTAE in Pittsburgh for its fight for open records and KNXV in Phoenix for its investigation into security lapses at the airport. In all there were 35 recipients of the awards administered by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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