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The National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University has just launched sportsjournalism.org, a website devoted to the subject of sports journalism and sports media.

The latest Pew survey into the credibility of U.S. news media paints a bleak picture, with the news media’s reputation reaching or matching all-time lows for accuracy, neutrality, independence and willingness to admit mistakes. Also notable is the pervasive partisan divide between how Republicans and Democrats view specific news organizations.

U.S. media companies suffered a devastating decline in advertising revenue during the first six months of this year, according to a Nielsen report. Biggest losers included the newspaper and magazine sectors. Gainers included infomercials and smartphone ads.

Some other findings from a study by social media marketing firm Sysomos: More than 85 per cent of users rarely post (less than once a day) About five per cent of users account for 75 per cent of content Only six per cent of users have more than 100 followers.

About 40 per cent of sports reporters gamble on sports, even though many admit it undermines their ability to report objectively, according to a survey of sports reporters conducted by the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University. The survey results were published in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Sports Communication.

Articles published in the most recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Media Studies that may be of interest to the journalism community: “Informed Mutual Support: Options on Violence and Trauma from the Perspective of the Journalist”, by Robert M. Frank and Ross Perigoe “Covering Democracy: The coverage of FPTP vs. MMP in the Ontario…

Well, waddaya know? Journalism’s traditional and much-criticized tendency to attract readers by emphasing negativity and localism appears to have measurable, scientific merit. According to a study from the University of Missouri School of Journalism that measured physiological responses to different types of health stories, people are biologically hardwired to pay attention to news that’s close to home and potentially threatening.

Articles recently published in academic journals that may be of interest to the journalism community: “A Fresh Crop of Human Misery’: Representations of Bosnian ‘War Babies’ in the Global Print Media, 1991—2006”, by R. Charli Carpenter, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2009 “U.K. Television News: Monopoly Politics and Cynical Populism”,…

“The OECD is conducting a study on the Future of News to which this discussion session contributes. Independent journalism and newspapers play an indispensable role in informing citizens. Yet currently the newsgathering and distribution process is undergoing deep changes. In OECD countries both the number of physical newspaper titles, their circulation and newspaper readership are…

For many in the traditional media business, attracting young readers and viewers is like searching for the Holy Grail, a quest that never quite succeeds as hoped. However, according to How Teens Use Media, a new “myth-debunking” study by the Nielsen company, teens really aren’t that different from other people in how they interact with mass media.  “The fact is, teens are unique, but they are not…