WHERE’S YOUR NEWS AT 2014?

Ineffable as always, the PEW Research Center’s Journalism Project released its 2014 State of the News Media report. An arching report that is always an insightful and in-depth assessment of the face of journalism — and thus of the media and publishing landscape in whole. Topics include audience, economics, ownership, reporting, technology, media, social media, culture, language….  This year, PEW says there is hope for the state of American journalism! Good news, and of course the game-changing developments continue to unfold.

The larger trends confirm the obvious — fragmentation, convergence, and digital rules! The smaller details are the interesting pieces that put to appreciation the context of our always shifting media paradigms…

Read the full report here: State of the News Media 2014

HIGHLIGHTS:

•  $60 Billion — Total value of the US journalism industry
  • 66% of this revenue comes from advertising

• “The majority of Americans now get their news in some digital format.”
  • 84% from desktop or laptop — 54% from mobile

DIGITAL RULES

No surprise, but emphasized is the legitimate presence of digital publishers, who are boasting bigger newsrooms and larger talent — Buzzfeed, Mashable, Huffpost..

• 500 digital news outlets, most built since 2007

•     Social and Mobile — Also no surprise.
  • 50 % of Facebook and Twitter users get news on those sites
  • 50% of social network users share or repost news articles
    • 46% discuss news
• Native advertising continues to rise — est. $2.85 billion by 2014
• 33% of Americans listen to online radio

NEW BUSINESS MODELS

New players and new money are getting involved with new ideas to generate revenue and reach audiences.

• Non-profit news and philanthropic support is growing
• New infrastructure models are developing, free of legacy burden
  • Digital reporting and user-generated content
  • Online news videos — 44% increase in ad revenues
• Changing demographics finally getting represented — Hispanic news operations on the rise

LEGACY WHAT?

Legacy media continues to recede, pulling back budgets and scaling back newsrooms. But newspapers still do most of the world’s reporting and employ most of the journalists — 38,000. But…

•    Job security is down — full-time newsroom employment dropped 6.4%
• Print ad revenues continue to decline
• TV and newspapers pulling back from global coverage
• Independent alternative weekly pubs declined 6%

• TV ad revenue is stable and there was actually a resurgence for local television broadcasting and increased viewers tuning in to local news coverage.

 

That is just a snippet, read the whole report and check out PEW’s analysis and overview of this year’s findings: HERE