U.S. newspapers hacked 5,900 jobs from their newsrooms last year, the largest round of print journalism job reductions since the American Society of News Editors started counting in 1978. The cuts, representing 11.3 per cent of the workforce, left about 46,700 journalists still working in U.S. newsrooms, down from a peak of 56,900 in 1990. Alan Bass
Local television stations provided more hours of weekday news last year despite cutting staff and reducing salaries, according to a study released at the annual Radio-Television News Directors Association convention. Member stations reduced staff levels by about 1,200 people (4.3 per cent) while average salaries declined by 13.3 per cent for reporters, 11.5 per cent for news anchors, 9.1 per cent for…
Selected articles from the April 2009 issue of Journalism of possible interest to the journalism community: Towards a `Foxification’ of 24-hour news channels in Britain?: An analysis of market-driven and publicly funded news coverage, by Stephen Cushion and Justin Lewis Making good sense: Transformative processes in community journalism, by Michael Meadows, Susan Forde, Jacqui Ewart, and Kerrie…
Journalists who work online are worried the Internet is undermining journalism’s professional values, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. A slight majority of respondents believed journalism is on the “wrong track,” with many citing declining journalistic standards as their main concern. However, the study notes, online journalists are more optimistic about the future than those who work in…
Readership of Canadian magazines is down less than three per cent since last year, according to figures released by the Print Measurement Bureau. Reader’s Digest has the largest readership and CAA Magazine has the largest circulation. Alan Bass
Readership of Canadian newspapers remains strong despite the financial problems plaguing the industry, according to figures released today by NADbank. Almost half of Canadian adults read a newspaper on an average weekday and weekly readership of newspapers in large markets has changed little during the past five years, the newspaper research organization reported. Meanwhile, the Canadian Circulation Audit Board also…
Two graphs included in the 2009 State of the Media report published by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism show at a glance why some sectors of the news business are in desperate straits. One shows 2007-2008 advertising revenue trends; the other shows audience trends for the same period. Newspapers in particular are suffering a double whammy – print…
If newspapers are dying, here’s why: A lot of people don’t care. That message comes through loud and clear in a recent poll conducted by Pew Research. Asked if they’d miss their local paper if it had to shut down, only 33 per cent of respondents said they’d miss it a lot. Forty-two per cent said “not much” or “not at…
Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is beta testing an open-source, automated online media research tool called Media Cloud. According to the Center, Media Cloud software can already code full-text content from an extensive range of traditional and new media outlets, including blogs, and issue comparative reports about news subjects, terminology correlations and geographic…
A large majority – 82.8 per cent – of Americans believe newspapers are still relevant but far fewer – 45.5 per cent – believe they’ll still exist in 10 years, according to a survey conducted by New York PR firm The Rosen Group. More than 29 per cent of survey respondents declared “websites devoted to news reporting” to…