The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism did a study on the state of the news media in 2013. I'm afraid the findings were a little depressing. Among the findings...
*Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978.
*A growing list of media outlets, such as Forbes magazine, use technology by a company called Narrative Science to produce content by way of algorithm, no human reporting necessary.
*In local TV, our special content report reveals, sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced on the newscasts studied while story lengths shrink.
*This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands.
*Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.
This report focuses on something that I've been talking about since I wrote $everance. There may be more media outlets, and it may seem like we're getting more and more information, but the number of people actually collecting the raw news--the reporters--is shrinking. The information gets out there faster, and is spread easier, but collecting the actual raw information--that crucial first step--is being neglected.
The saying used to be "Content is King".
If only it were so.
