The Project for Excellence in Journalism had published its latest study, analysing issues facing the news media.

Produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the American News Media 2005 finds that:

- As traditional media continue to lose audience [...] news organizations will be tempted to cut back on news gathering and change standards to compete with the new models. "In effect, Americans are shifting from being consumers of news to pro-active partners in creating their own personalized news account each day, and traditional journalism is only part of that mix," said Project Director Tom Rosenstiel. "This amounts to a new kind American citizenship with more responsibilities for the consumer."

- The audience for online journalism is still growing - a little. And in the future, the likely growth in broadband and the heavy orientation among the young toward the Web suggests that growth will continue and maybe accelerate again. The Web - and a converged multimedia news environment - seem more clearly than ever to be journalism's future. [...] Maybe the innovation will be left to citizens, entrepreneurs and bloggers who see themselves - perhaps mistakenly - as working in opposition to mainstream journalism. If so, the online trajectory is doubly problematic: The energy is coming from sources with a dearth of journalism essentials like verification and editing. Meanwhile, the economic base supporting the most difficult and expensive journalistic undertakings is eroding.

- There is little sign the major news web sites are taking advantage of the technology of the Internet. Less than a third of lead stories on news sites studied included video links or allowed users to sort through data.

- "The news is moving from being an organized, prepared lecture to a free-flowing conversation, with all the advantages and disadvantages that implies," said Mr. Rosenstiel. "The process is more open, but, paradoxically, it is also more prone to manipulation by those who want to shape public opinion. The cases of the government hiring commentators and creating faux web sites are part of this phenomenon."

The rest of the report is here.

Categorie(s)/Catégorie(s): Blog musings , Lifestyles

Feedback/Réaction(s): TrackBack & pings(0) | Comments/Commentaires(0) | Referring Web Pages, last 5 days