News Media Trends

Some critics have assailed Time magazine’s choice for 2006 Person of the Year in recent days, calling the editors’ selection of “You” with a mirror on the cover gimmicky. But this wasn’t the first unconventional choice for Time’s honor – or the first time a group of people was selected. PEJ takes stock of Time’s past Persons of the Year from 1927 on.

What difference has Tony Snow made since becoming President George W. Bush’s press secretary? The President has been more accessible, for one thing. Tony Snow, it turns out, also talks more than his predecessor, Scott McClellan. A PEJ analysis suggests that in his regular give-and-take with the White House journalists, White House Q&A sessions are wordier and longer with the former TV and radio talk host at the helm.

It’s hard to know whether the universe of satellite radio companies is about to be cut in half. Is Sirius Radio boss Mel Karmazin’s talk about a merger between his company and XM Radio simply chatter or a prelude to a deal? Any union of the two intensely competitive satellite radio services would have to pass regulatory muster. Here’s a look at how the two satellite radio services stack up.

A two-year-old experiment in shrinking the global village, Global Voices features bloggers who often write about parts of the world that are ignored by the mainstream media. In this PEJ interview, co-founder Ethan Zuckerman talks about the promise of the blogosphere and some of the problems with traditional journalism.

Summary of Findings Despite deep public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the highly anticipated report by a bipartisan panel proposing new policy options for Iraq did not register strongly with most Americans. Only about half say they heard even a little about the report released last week by the Iraq Study Group led by James […]

What was the treatment of the eagerly awaited Iraq Study Group report across the nation's front pages? To find out, PEJ looked at nearly 200 headlines from Dec. 7, the day after its release. While there wasn’t much good news to tout, these editors seemed almost evenly divided over whether to highlight the report’s critique of the administration or its prescription for change in Iraq.

There’s a battle brewing over whether the government should regulate the use of video news releases—prepackaged segments often produced for commercial clients—that look like news reports and sometimes appear on local TV newscasts. This PEJ backgrounder examines the dispute between television industry representatives and their critics.

What are the best newspapers in America? The question used to be hotly debated. But when Poynter.org readers were asked to weigh in recently there was tepid response. Does that reflect a stagnating newspaper industry? We offer the results of that effort here. But maybe the more interesting, or at least refreshing question, is what are the best news web sites.

Three decades later, the Washington Post’s reporting on the Watergate scandal is still spoken about with a hushed reverence as a singular journalistic achievement. The legend and mythology surrounding Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein continue to grow, even as the industry itself has changed.

How did the news media fare on Nov. 7? A PEJ study of 32 different media outlets on Election Day offers “five lessons” about the coverage of major breaking- news events in the multi-media era, and a “sector-by-sector” breakdown. While some outlets struggled to find their role, those that combined both speed and interactivity seemed the most useful destinations.