How to Use Our Website

Journalism.org is designed to give users the power to find precisely what they want and then customize that data to learn more. Here is a rundown of each part of the site and how to get the most from it.

TODAY'S LEAD: This is our Top Story each day. It may be our Weekly News Index, a larger study by PEJ, a background report or commentary, an update of news media trend data compiled by others, or Our Weekly Number, an interesting piece of data from our Numbers Library.

DAILY BRIEFING: Our daily digest of news about the media can be found in our Daily Briefing.

ANALYSIS: Our Analysis section contains all the narrative reports PEJ has produced since it began in 1997. This includes both our major empirical research work, broken out in the Studies section, and our quicker and more concise reports, such op eds, articles, and brief background primers, broken out in in Commentaries and Backgrounders. Through a new filtering tool, we have “tagged” all our reports so that users can search our complete archive of reports by industry, trend, or news event to find precisely the report they are looking for. This Analysis archive includes our State of the News Media reports broken into digestible subchapters.

NUMBERS: Perhaps the biggest change is the new Numbers section, which contains virtually all the data PEJ has produced since it began in 1997. Here users can search our data archive by industry, by trend and by news event. Once they have found what they want, they then can customize that data and create their own charts. Through an advanced customization option, they can even change the colors and look of these charts and graphs to make them camera ready for their own use. (Please see our permissions policy.) PEJ will also track these data trends more frequently than in the past, posting new data for many of these topics monthly and quarterly. The Numbers section contains all the data that is in our annual State of the News Media reports.

NEWS INDEX: The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index is, we believe, the largest effort ever to measure and analyze the American news media on a continuing basis. The Index examines some four dozen news outlets in real time to determine what is being covered and what is not — a broad sense of the American news agenda. It is released every week on Tuesday, and a Talk Show Index is released every Friday.

ALSO WORTH NOTING: This section highlights content that many people are looking for, apart from our latest studies or data. We periodically change content here to feature items that are not necessarily the most recent but we think are of special intersest to our visitors.

STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA: The website of our annual State of the News Media reports is also here, accessed through tabs at the top of the page and usually in our Also Worth Noting section.

LATEST FROM PEW RESEARCH.ORG: At the bottom right of our site, we feature the latest research being put out by our sibling projects at the Pew Research Center.

RSS: To receive notices of any of our new research, including the industry trend updates, we have added RSS feeds tailored to different sections of the site.

OTHER FEATURES: The new About PEJ section has been revamped and expanded. And we made it easier to join our Email List. Please tell us something about your occupation, are you a print journalist, a student, a blogger?

We hope the new journalism.org is a valuable tool. Use it to track business trends, examine how the press covered certain major news events, or explore why readership in print media has declined—among many other topics.

Phase2 Technology built and powers the site. Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group did the design. Don Bell built the customizable chart area.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK: We also want your reactions. If you have suggestions, questions or critiques, please send them along to mail@journalism.org