Media Industry

After the media complained about lack of access to previous conflicts, hundreds of embedded journalists lived, traveled and reported right alongside US troops at the outset of the Iraq war. Now, three years later, there are barely two dozen embeds left.

Baseball's Fall Classic has not been a hit with TV viewers in recent years. In the last 20 years World Series ratings have fallen by more than 50% so that it now only averages one quarter of the audience of the Super Bowl. And through two games, the 2006 Series is the lowest-rated ever.

The media landscape has changed dramatically since Harvard’s Shorenstein Center was established 20 years ago. And when journalists and dignitaries assembled there on Oct. 13-14 to evaluate the current role of journalism in our democracy, there was good news and bad. The bad was that new technologies have created credibility concerns and economic problems for mainstream journalists. The good news may be the emergence of the citizen journalist.

Sandwiched between a declining print industry and an online universe still building economic momentum, newspaper companies are looking at combined Internet and newsprint readership as a new way of measuring audience. A big unanswered question is whether advertisers will agree that this is a more accurate way to count their potential customers.

A new book surveying more than 1,000 journalists finds their politics have drifted a bit to the right since the 1990s, but they still remain more liberal than the general US population. With a majority of the public accusing news outlets of political bias, these numbers aren’t likely to silence that noisy debate.

A newly released book based on four decades of surveys of US journalists finds a profession that is steadily growing grayer, but lagging behind when it comes to integrating women and minorities into the newsroom. This demographic stagnation may well be a reflection of a mainstream media beset by a series of economic woes.

Many of those in the blogosphere see themselves as watchdogs arrayed against an insular political establishment dominated by consultants, interests groups, and the mainstream media. But with bloggers taking an increasingly active role in some of the key 2006 political races, are they sacrificing that independence to become part of the system they decry?

Earlier this year, a research team led by a Harvard professor unveiled a strategy to help reverse the revenue and circulation ills of the newspaper industry and encourage it to reinvent itself. Some publications have reported early success in adopting the plan that asks readers: “What do you hire a newspaper to do for you?”

Despite all the problems plaguing the newspaper industry, a new survey reveals that 2005 was the best year since 1999 for college grads with a print journalism degree to land jobs in their field. Thanks to the economic health of local papers and the old media’s transition to cyberspace, a degree in journalism is still a pretty good ticket to a first paycheck.

In what could become a high-stakes legal battle, a world renowned professor claims he was defamed in an Aug. 28 New Yorker story about the skirmish over assigning credit for a major mathematics breakthrough. While the magazine stands by its story, the professor is threatening litigation if he doesn’t get an apology and retraction.