Michael Barthel

We’ve updated our series of fact sheets on the U.S. news media industry. Here are some key findings about the state of the industry in 2020.

Using data from outside organizations has some advantages, but also poses challenges, especially when it comes to media industry data.

A new study of posts on popular public Facebook pages about the early days of the Biden administration finds that the focus of these posts, as well as the assessments of the new president, differed widely by the ideological orientation of the pages.

As news outlets morph and multiply, both surveys and passive data collection tools face challenges.

Roughly half of Americans or more were able to correctly identify whether three of the six sources asked about do their own reporting.

Among the six publicly traded newspaper companies studied, second-quarter advertising revenue fell by a median of 42% year over year.

Videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively and discuss conspiracy theories.

Traffic to digital-native news sites has plateaued in recent years. After rising from 2014 to 2016, it remained steady through 2019.

59% of Americans think news organizations do not understand people like them, while a minority – 37% – say they do feel understood.

#BlackLivesMatter was used roughly 47.8 million times on Twitter – an average of just under 3.7 million times per day – from May 26 to June 7.