How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City
Tremendously fascinating study by the Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism, details the news reporting in Baltimore during a certain week. Aside from looking at the distribution and number of the news stories created and how they were circulated online, the study reveals that different media pint different worlds:
Yet the quantity of stories produced does not tell everything about their nature.
Some media were more locally focused than others. The media sector that devoted the greatest level of its coverage to local events was TV news. Fully 64% of the stories on the local 6 p.m. TV newscasts were about local matters.[5] By comparison, 53% of stories studied in Baltimore area newspapers were local. In talk radio, the majority of the segments were about national or non-local events (52%).
The new media content in new media, on the other hand, was highly local and mostly locally produced, though, as we will see, it was often brief and derivative of other news accounts. More than eight out of ten of the postings or stories (85%) were locally focused.
The level of original work also varied. Eight out of ten newspaper stories (80%) were straight news accounts written by local staffers.
In television, there was also less original content from staff reporters. Roughly a third the stories, 34%, were edited packages featuring correspondents doing the reporting (the TV equivalent of an original staff written story), and another 13% were anchors narrating a taped package that did not feature a correspondent from the field. But more than a third 36% were “anchor reads” and “tell stories,” often material from wire services.
In radio there was little of what would be considered reporting. Roughly half the segments were anchors doing monologues, and 38% of the segments involved the host interviewing a guest or a caller. There was no original reporting found, either in talk radio or in the news inserts and radio headlines that were produced during the periods studied (during the 7 a.m. drive time hour).
Looking at the topics covered, too, the news agendas of these outlets were strikingly different. The world one encounters differs dramatically depending on where one seeks his or her information.
On local television, for instance, fully 23% of stories studied were about crime, twice as many as other subject.[6] In newspapers (online and print) coverage of crime was almost matched by that of government and closely followed by business and education. On radio in Baltimore, by contrast, government was the No. 1 topic. New media was most often focused on government.
McLuhan was obviously right when he said “the medium is the message.” When you view the world through the lens of a medium — let’s say TV — your perception of what is going on — the amount of crime, in this case — is shaped by the way the newshole is filled.
I am sure that the same is true in social news: the people that I follow choose what sort of snippets to quote or link to. My worldview is shaped by the thousands of independent choices made by a swarm of edglings, and then I chose which to click on, read, blog, or retweet. And the thousands downstream of me are influenced by my acts, as one of the many minds they are following.
This is the future of news: we, the edglings, passing bits of news around as social objects, and growing the strength of our connections as an direct consequence.
I think this is socially transformative, and ultimately a richer way to live and contribute to the social polity than being a passive member of an ‘audience’ for radio jokesters or TV talking heads.
