Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism — State of the News Media 2011

The Pew report is here, "Overview." (And click through to the longer, detailed overview, which is fascinating.) And from the key findings:

Digital: In December 2010, 41% of Americans cited the internet as the place where they got “most of their news about national and international issues,” up 17% from a year earlier. When it came to any kind of news, 46% of people now say they get news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time. Only local TV news is a more popular platform in America now (50%). The new wild card in digital is mobile. A new survey released as part of the State of the News Media find finds that 47% of Americans now say they get some kind of local news on mobile devices such as cellphones or other wireless devices (such as iPads). As of January 2011, just 7% of Americans owned electronic tablets, according to our new survey, but that is nearly double from four months prior; and 6% of American adults have e-readers.

A summary of the findings is at LAT, "For the first time, more people got news from the Web than newspapers in 2010, Pew report says."

NYT chooses a different angle, NPR viability: "At NPR, Strong Journalism and Weak Management": After discussing the key findings, NYT announces:

Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR.

Isn't that great. NPR gets a crutch from the far-left New York Times. Wonders never cease. Good thing too, since the folks at National Palestinian Radio are pushing back against the O'Keefe investigation, pushing back hard: "NPR: O'Keefe 'Inappropriately Edited' Video; Exec's Words Still 'Egregious'," and "Elements Of NPR Gotcha Video Taken Out of Context" (at Memeorandum). And more from Lindsay Beyerstein, "James O'Keefe and Journalistic Malpractice." This is like calling the fire truck after the house has burned to the ground. No need to watch the full two-hour clip to know exactly what NPR execs think, and of course we have the Betsy Liley e-mails to show exactly how NPR executives act. They wanted the money and they were willing to make a Muslim Brotherhood-style organization an "anonymous donor." O'Keefe's a muckraker --- and thank goodness for that. Beyerstein practically wet herself with feigned indignation. Not a peep about NPR's extreme progressive bias. All this talk, at NYT above, about outstanding reporting, blah, blah, blah, is great if you're a granola cruncher of the Berkeley Birkenstock and Harvard Yard pedigree. For the rest of America, it's a bunch of elitist crap.

It's no surprise that newspapers are dying off. Even cable is tanking, especially CNN, which saw less viewers in 2010 than the lowly MSNBC: "CNN's Primetime Viewership Falls Below MSNBC's In 2010; Network Evening News Audience Continues A 30 Year Decline."

More later ...