The State of the News Media report for 2008 is out. There are several interesting findings from the annual report, including that news is shifting from a product to a service that empowers consumers and that newsrooms are perceived as innovative. That last one surprised us a bit, but since we haven't done the leg work, we trust the folks at The Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The finding that we found most intriguing is that the agenda of the news media has narrowed, not broadened. The question here is, chicken or egg? Does the media not cover a wide range of topics because it is attempting to dictate public conversation or do readers simply have a narrow focus and want stories only on a few topics (the economy, the war in Iraq, etc.)? For our money, we see the reader as the problem -- though not our readers, of course ;). There is no question that news consumers in this country have decided that they want their news from people with the same views as them, talking about the topics that are important to them. If you're conservative, you watch Fox News. If you're liberal, ... you get the idea. The bottom line is that people have a narrowing view of the world and what the news media is covering is simply a reflection of that.
This, of course, is a major problem. The importance of journalism as the Fourth Estate cannot be understated in American history. Watergate, anyone? The exchange of differing opinions and ideas is important on several levels and if we all continue to watch only the views of those like us talking about only the three stories we care about, we lose the chance to broaden our understanding of others. (Deep, huh?) This angle represents the great elephant in the room, the story that journalists seem to avoid. Though we're not the ultimate clearinghouse, we haven't seen too much written on this topic. Then again, maybe it's not one of the three stories we care about.
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