The State of the News Media

For the past four years, the Project for Excellence in Journalism has published an annual report on American journalism. This year's report, as I'm sure previous reports have done, outlines some unfortunate but unsurprising trends in the news industry.

My journalism professors often toss around phrases like "localism," "digital journalism," and "citizen journalism," and this report does also. Before reading this report, I had a grasp on how the Internet was reshaping the journalsim industry and how the news media was attempting to adapt to the digital age. What I found most interesting about this report was that it actually dilineated to just what extent the changing face of journalism was affecting profits.

Newspaper revenues were flat in 2006; the number of ad pages in magazines in 2006 was flat; radio revenues were flat. The ad revenue for the ethnic press, particularly Hispanic, grew 4.6% in 2005, the latest data available, but that growth is expected to plateau soon.

Only the television industry seems to be surviving. Advertising revenues for local TV news increased 10% in 2006. Cable is also doing well. Fox's profits are projected to grow by a third, overtaking CNN (which isn't doing bad, either -- profits are expected to increase 13%). The report pointed out that television is able to increase revenues by adding more news programming during the day, whereas newspapers and magazines only have so much space to print news stories, and radio news has to contend with other types of programming. Fox News and CNN, on the other hand, are 24-hour news channels. Still, there are only 24 hours in a day, and they will not be able to add new programming forever. Eventually, the television industry will also have to develop a new economic model.

Another interesting sub-topic in the report concerned the function of blogs in 2007, and how the role of blogs and bloggers is expected to change in the future. Blogging doesn't represent citizen media as strongly as it once did. Politicians, corporations, and other organisations focused on generating positive public opinion are beginning to employ blogs to spread their message, sometimes covertly. Blogs are an open acess medium -- it is what gave blogs their initial appeal, but it is also what leaves them open to manipulation.

Blogs are also expected to change in the future just because of their immense appeal as a news provider. Well-known bloggers who have gained a large following are more prone to become a profit-driven business. To protect their status as a credible news source, many of these bloggers are forming codes of ethics and standards of conduct. Blogs are becoming professionalized, ironic considering many people enjoy blogs for their informal and unchecked style.