Coverage of health news is on the rise according to an examination of media coverage from January to June 2009. Which health news topics generated the biggest headlines in 2009? What media sectors pay the most attention to health care? These questions and more are answered in a new study, produced by PEJ and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In the past two decades, the makeup of the Washington D.C. press corps has been fundamentally transformed. While the old media have shrunk alarmingly, two new elements have risen up to virtually replace them in number. What are the implications for news consumers in the U.S. and abroad?

How have the news media covered the early days of the Obama presidency? How does that coverage stack up against that of his predecessors? A new study examines the tone and focus of Obama’s media narrative and how compares it to Bill Clinton’s and George Bush’s.

News web sites can instantly measure which stories and features are popular and which are bombing at the online box office. How are journalists using this instantaneous data, and is the net effect positive or not?

How popular was local television as a source for news in 2008? How did ratings for morning, evening and late night newscasts fare? These questions and more are answered in the Local TV chapter of the State of the News Media 2009 report.

In an industry that is constantly changing, how is radio faring? In what ways has technology affected how people get their news on the radio? Read the Audio Chapter of the State of the News Media 2009 for answers.

In 2008, new media consumption patterns and a worsening economy battered an already flailing news industry. How are different media coping with declines in ad spending? This question and more are answered in PEJ’s new State of the News Media 2009 report.

Even before the recession, the fundamental question facing journalism was whether the news industry could win a race against the clock for survival: could it find new ways to underwrite the gathering of news online, while using the declining revenue of the old platforms to finance the transition?

In 2008, the news agenda in the mainstream media shrank sharply, the press was late in picking up on the economic collapse and the war in Iraq all but disappeared from the news.

Journalists who work online are more optimistic about the future of their profession than are news people tied to more traditional media platforms, but at best their optimism is an uneasy one, according a new survey of members of the Online News Association produced by the Association and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.