News Media Trends

No other event or story generated much attention as the battle for Congress was finally resolved, accounting for more than half of last week’s coverage. Once the voters had spoken, the media pivoted from polls and predictions to post-mortems and projections about the new political landscape. And not surprisingly, President Obama was at the center of the narrative.

In today’s news landscape, both mainstream and new media sources shape the narrative. A new PEJ study finds that no single unified message reverberated throughout the media universe in the wake of the November 2 voting and what one learned depended largely on where one got the news.  How did the post election-day narrative differ from the front pages to the television studies and from bloggers to Twitterers?

Summary of Findings Both the public and the media focused most closely last week on the congressional elections as Tuesday’s midterm vote approached. Still, the public’s interest in election news did not increase in the final days of the campaign, despite heavy news coverage. The latest News Interest Index survey, conducted among 1,003 adults from […]

Attention to the crucial midterm congressional elections reached new heights last week, accounting for nearly half the overall news coverage. The top stories also included the economy, a new terror plot, the conflict in Afghanistan and fresh revelations about the BP oil disaster that dominated coverage in the summer. 

The online rhetoric heated up last week as bloggers from the left and right responded to statements from two controversial GOP figures. On Twitter, users marveled over an unorthodox space launch while on YouTube, the subject of UFOs was front and center.

Summary of Findings While the media provided heavy coverage of the congressional elections last week, the public continued to track news about the nation’s struggling economy more closely than news about the midterm vote. About four-in-ten (41%) say they followed news about the economy very closely last week, while 30% say they followed news about […]

Thanks to polls, prognosticators and personal attacks, the congressional election cycle galvanized the news media last week. The economy finished as the No. 2 story, with the foreclosure crisis once again driving the narrative. And a noteworthy news industry firing, that of NPR’s Juan Williams, triggered an impassioned journalistic and political debate.

The country’s ongoing mortgage crisis sparked outrage from many bloggers last week while others discussed the compatibility—or lack thereof—between faith and science. On Twitter, images of the rescued Chilean miners drew cheers. And on YouTube, a movie star’s surprise visit to a school received millions of views.

Summary of Findings The dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for more than two months dominated the public’s news interest last week, while the media focused on both the miners’ saga and the midterm Congressional elections. With the Nov. 2 elections fast approaching, the percent of the public tracking election news very closely […]

Thanks to some bruising campaigns and controversial remarks, the 2010 midterms led the mainstream news agenda again last week as an outspoken gubernatorial candidate moved to the center of the narrative. And the happy conclusion to the story of the 33 trapped Chilean miners, captured on live television, finished as a strong No. 2 subject.