Pew Releases State of the News Report

WASHINGTON: The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in News Journalism has released its State of the News 2009 report, chronicling the effects of the economic crisis and changing consumer habits on news outlets, with the Internet and cable TV being the only platforms to have seen an increase in usage.

The research reveals that Americans are increasingly turning to on-demand news, rather than appointment viewing. As such, major online news sites have experienced significant gains. The top 50 news websites saw traffic for the year grow 27 percent, while all news and information sites grew 7 percent. The top four news sites, Yahoo, MSNBC.com, CNN.com and AOL, saw unique visitors grow 22 percent to 23.6 million visitors a month. That was twice the rate of increase of 2007 and more than five times the rate in 2006.

In the cable news landscape, the average monthly audience of the three major news channels throughout the day and evening grew by 38 percent to a new high of 2.2 million. Post U.S. presidential election, however, there was a drop-off in viewership. Pre-tax profits in 2008 for the three major news cable channels grew by a third over the year before to an estimated $1.1 billion. Next year, however, will not be as strong, now that the election season is over. The cable outlets are somewhat insulated from the crisis, however, given than half of their revenues come from subscription fees.

At network news, meanwhile, the decline in the three commercial evening newscasts slowed to just 1 percent, or 300,000 viewers, versus about a million lost annually over the last two decades. A total of 22.8 million people still watch the three programs each night, and 13.1 million watch the networks’ morning news. Local television remained the nation’s most popular source for news, but, on a percentage basis, it was among the biggest losers of audience in 2008. Today, just 52 percent are regular viewers of local TV, news down from 64 percent ten years ago. Unlike cable, however, the economics for network and local TV are more challenging. "With a different and decidedly disadvantaged economic model, the whole network model of providing programming to local stations is in question," the report states. "If it collapses, so might the notion of network news programming. All that can be said with certainty is that network executives are facing challenges they have never seen before."

The report calls the numbers for print newspapers "bleak," with circulation down 4.6 percent for daily editions in the year, but cited the state of weekly news magazines as "the bleakest." In addition, roughly 5,000 full-time newsroom jobs were cut, or about 10 percent in 2008. By the end of 2009, the newsrooms of American daily newspapers may employ somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent fewer people than in 2001.