Key Documents: Section IV. Data on the Status and Practice of Journalism - Introduction

Introduction

Working journalists look to ferret out, report on, and write about meaningful change, and the agents of change, in society. They also determine the impact of that change, for better or worse, and what countermoves might occur as a result. Journalism industry researchers in the United States do just about the same thing within the confines of their beat. They use surveys, studies, and reports to gauge the type and degree of change nationwide within specific segments of the profession—or the newsworthy lack of change in, say, the presence of minorities in the newsroom. Then they report on the key trends afoot in the status and practice of journalism and what that portends for the future.

This section focuses on six high-impact categories—audience research, public opinion, Internet impact on media, newsroom diversity, journalism employment/careers, and key trends in journal-ism—that tell a good deal about the state of the profession today and where it is going. Although the data in all these areas change rapidly and stay fluid, the patterns discerned remain relatively reliable and useful for quite some time. By contrast, reports on media ownership and investments are purposely omitted at this juncture. The financial turmoil that hit the news business and world economy in 2008 makes this kind of information or statistics obsolete quicker than most.

The Pew Research Center (PRC) Biennial News Consumption Survey (2008) breaks the American audience into four distinct groups: Traditionalists, Integrators, Net-Newsers, and the Disengaged. The survey reveals that audiences for traditional news sources—network television and newspapers—still comprise nearly half the public but cannot keep newspapers from falling into a steady decline. Traditionalists are the oldest segment of the news-consuming audience and show a more heavy reliance on television news and pictures rather than reading or listening.

Youthful Net-Newsers and middle-aged Integrators, 13 percent and 23 percent of the public, respectively, tend to be better educated and more affluent than Traditionalists. These groups feed the burgeoning trend toward people getting a larger portion of their news online. Tech-savvy Net-Newsers often read political blogs and view online news. Integrators split their time primarily between television and online news. They spend the most time following the news and demonstrate the greatest interest in political news and sports. The Disengaged make up a sizable 14 percent of the public and display little interest in the news or news consumption.

The Radio-Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF)/Ford Foundation—2006 Future of the News Survey confirmed in its Executive Summary that people still overwhelmingly get most of their news from local television—followed by newspapers as a distant second, network TV news, local radio, and then the Internet. The survey found that online news, blogs, and other relatively new options were steadily “nibbling away” at the audience for traditional mass media. More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they would like to interact with television news in the future. The Magazine Handbook 2009–2010, put out by The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), offers audience research that shows top-tier magazines tend to draw comparably better among teens and young adults than the most popular television programs, and those magazine readers test out as more innovative. MPA studies in Magazine Reach and Reader Charac teristics also indicate a particularly high magazine readership among diverse readers like African American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino adults.

...