News Media Trends

The country’s weakened economy rivaled the presidential transition as top story of the week while much coverage focused on two women who ran losing campaigns for the executive branch.

The big buzz surrounding the Obama transition last week was that once-fierce rival Hillary Clinton might become his Secretary of State. Meanwhile Sarah Palin, shielded from the press during the campaign, made up for lost time with a media blitz.

A Changed View of American Democracy

Summary of Findings By all accounts, the public liked Campaign 2008 and followed election news avidly. But enough is enough. Fully 82% say they will not miss following election news, while only 17% say they will miss it. Even among Democrats, only a quarter say they will miss the campaign. Many Americans (23%) say they […]

When the campaign was finally over, the media almost immediately viewed Barack Obama's victory as a transformational event, and a subject that had been in some ways taboo moved front and center - race.

The campaign press declared Barack Obama’s Nov. 4 victory a culturally transforming event, but was far less certain it was a politically transforming moment. And within days, the search for lessons had yielded to speculation about the new administration.

Summary of Findings As the long presidential campaign wound down last week, the public remained highly engaged. Fully 60% of registered voters said they were following campaign news very closely, while 28% said they were following fairly closely. That is the highest level of voter interest just before a presidential election since the Pew Research […]

TV continues to dominate the media landscape, but the internet now rivals newspapers as a main source for campaign news.

In the final week of the campaign, both presidential candidates continued to pound away at each other’s economic policies. But as they examined the details of the last polls, the battlegrounds, and the strategy, the media had all but anointed a winner.

Summary of Findings Many more Americans are turning to the internet for campaign news this year as the web becomes a key source of election news. Television remains the dominant source, but the percent who say they get most of their campaign news from the internet has tripled since October 2004 (from 10% then to […]