Reporting from China

China wants to create a news and entertainment industry able to compete on the world stage with the likes of News Corp. and Viacom, the New York Times reports. As communication becomes more global, how will news coverage that originates in the United States differ from coverage in other countries? As consumers are given more choices, how will the traditional form of coverage Americans have come to know fare?

Facts for factions

A Pew survey finds 62 percent of Americans want the media to exercise a watchdog role over politicians. Meantime, only 29 percent of Americans think the media gets the facts straight - the worst result in over two decades of polling.

Partisan leanings account for some of the disparity. People allied with the party in power are much less likely to support watchdogs than those allied with the party out of power.

The media's increasingly fragmented and opinionated approach to coverage only amplifies this, as readers expect watchdogs to chase away the opposition. In this worldview, "facts" are whatever helps the watchdog get the job done - and like with members of Congress, people tend to like their own facts and dislike everyone else's.

A specialized diet at Readers Digest

To survive both the decline in print and America's great differentiation, the now-bankrupt Readers Digest plans to transform itself from a general-interest publication into something better suited to our fragmented society.

As Robert Rector observes, Readers Digest once traded on a caricature of the upright, white, suburban middle-class family and, in doing so, gained a broad audience in an America that strove to be a being part of that world. The Internet has punctuated and amplified the cracks in this worldview, and now Readers Digest must become a caricature of itself. It will strip away the veneer of mainstream appeal and follow the cultural guideposts of the sect called American conservative.

Rector writes:

...the Digest, after years of trying to broaden its appeal, is being pushed in a decidedly conservative direction.

It is cutting down on celebrity profiles and ramping up on inspiring spiritual stories. Out are generic how-to magazine features; in are articles about military life. ...

Indeed, the Digest plans to introduce a new multifaceted effort produced with Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, called the Purpose Driven Connection. For about $30, subscribers get a quarterly magazine with religious workbooks, along with DVDs featuring Warren, and membership in a social-networking Web site, including tips on what to pray for each week. It is available through churches and at Wal-Marts.

Pop goes the news

Iran led the media coverage last week, according to a study done by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, but the death of Michael Jackson came in a fast second - and almost certainly will take the top spot for this week:

For the week, the protests in Iran ended up being the biggest story, totaling 19% of the newshole studied during June 22-28 by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Though he died Thursday night, Michael Jackson’s death was nearly as big, filling 18%, and Governor Sanford’s story, which fully broke on Wednesday, was third at 11%.

Cable television went nuts with the Jackson story and ignored almost everything else:

All media sectors covered Jackson heavily, but it was cable news channels that led the way. Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop. On the front pages of Friday morning newspapers, 37% of their coverage was Jackson-related compared to 55% of the leading online coverage.

The social networks were all atwitter with Jackson as well:

So many Google users searched for information about the dead singer that the popular search engine mistook the interest as a potential malware attack. For a short period of time, Google users were greeted with a message that read, “We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.”

The popular communication site Twitter crashed, and Wikipedia experienced more than 500 edits to Jackson’s profile in less than 24 hours. AOL’s popular instant messenger service went down for approximately 40 minutes and the company released a statement that read, “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

Missing links

Shortly after the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, websites that hosted the writings of James von Brunn began erasing the links. Although caches of the writings still exist, the effort to remove his words has raised questions about online ethics and transparency.

From the Washington Post:

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which resulted in the death of one security guard, several items were unearthed online that appeared to be written by von Brunn: a piece titled "Obama Is Missing," which questioned the president's citizenship, on conservative forum FreeRepublic.com. A Wikipedia user bio page (von Brunn had edited only sporadically), in which he wrote that Judaism is "the Enemy of Mankind." A long-stagnant personal site, HolyWesternEmpire.org, which included links to a novel.

Throughout Wednesday afternoon, these links began to disappear. Clicking on the personal site resulted in an error message. The Wikipedia user page vanished. The Free Republic link was also removed -- at least for a while. Current events Web site Daily Kos remarked on the removal, and a few hours later, the post reappeared.