Four today

1. Four New York Times journalists are missing in Libya, including two-time Pulitzer-winner Anthony Shadid. NYT

2. Pew's State of the Media report for 2011. Pew

3. KPCC is looking for a web designer/developer. APM

4. A neo-Nazi rally is planned for March 19 in Claremont to "respond" to a pro-immigration rally at the Claremont Colleges. Daily Bulletin

The war that few people are talking about

Brian Stelter at the New York Times reports on a recent poll that finds only 4 percent of national news coverage in 2010 was devoted to the war in Afghanistan, despite the escalation in troops and troop deaths. This is down from 5 percent in 2009.

Four in the morning

1. How to use the dreaded semicolon The Oatmeal

2. An Oregonian reported got fired for going outside of the network Willamette Week

3. Los Angeles City Hall reporters don't like the new access rules. LAT

4. Differences in what social media covers versus the mainstream press. PEJ

Four in the morning

1. The Daily News looks at dismal results of a recent USC study of local television news and asks backers what they plan to do about it. DN

2. After someone leaked his 119 words and phrases that should be banned from radio, a cranky Tribune CEO Randy Michaels met with staff to show them his thin skin. Vocalo

3. The annual "State of the Media" report is out from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Every media sector is losing money except for cable news. Pew

4. Fox News host Glenn Beck cries even during rehearsals. Howard Kurtz

Where we're getting our news - and what we're doing with it

Most people continue to get their news from local and national television broadcasts, but the Internet continues to surge as a source, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The survey finds that on a typical day 61 percent of people get at least some of their news online (weather reports are the top subject matter for online consumption).

The survey also claims that online is now the third most popular platform for news, behind local and national television. The finding isn't clear cut, however, since Pew splits local and national newspapers into two categories. Depending on the amount of overlap, the number of newspaper readers could be as high as 67 percent, although it's probably less. Online comes in at 61 percent and radio is fifth, with 54 percent of people getting some amount of news there during a typical day.

From the survey:

More than half of American adults (56%) say they follow the news "all or most of the time," and another quarter (25%) follow the news at least "some of the time." Asked specifically about their news habits on "a typical day," the results are striking -- 99% of American adults say that on a typical day, they get news from at least one of these media platforms: a local or national print newspaper, a local or national television news broadcast, radio or the internet.

Only local and national TV news, the latter if you combine cable and network, are more popular platforms than the internet for news. And most Americans use a combination of both online and offline sources. On a typical day:

• 78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station.
• 73% say they get news from a national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or Fox News.
• 61% say they get some kind of news online.
• 54% say they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.
• 50% say they read news in a local newspaper.
• 17% say they read news in a national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today.

The survey shows that online news consumption is often complimentary to more traditional media sources because it provides consumers with different experiences, such as the ability to get a quick news update (weather, headline, sports score, etc.), share an article or link, or offer an opinion in a comments section. Many people also find news updates on their computer's home page, in their email box, on Twitter feeds, and on social media sites - "more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails," the survey finds.

Traditional sources are less interactive and more reflective. They continue to be the headwaters of news, with their original reporting flowing out onto the web to be shared or hashed over in pools of social networks.

Interestingly, these social networks appear to be less interested in hashing over local news. From the survey findings:

The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).

Asked what subjects they would like to receive more coverage, 44% said scientific news and discoveries, 41% said religion and spirituality, 39% said health and medicine, 39% said their state government, and 38% said their neighborhood or local community.

*Edited

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.

Phew

“You don’t need to work at the L.A. Times anymore to be a significant journalist in L.A." -- Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, speaking Wednesday at USC Annenberg

(via Romenesko)

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."

Pew surveys online journalists

A study from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has found online journalists to be generally more optimistic about the future of journalism than their counterparts in print but also worried about a loosening of basic standards. From the study:

Overall, the online journalists surveyed are less likely to think journalism is headed in the “wrong direction” than are journalists from legacy media. They are also more confident than they are pessimistic that online news will find a self-sustaining revenue model.

-snip-

Those journalists surveyed, who come largely from websites linked to legacy media, also believe the Web is changing the fundamental values of the journalism—mostly for the worse. In particular, they are worried about declining accuracy, in part due to the emphasis online that news organizations are putting on speed and breaking news.