The Project also looked at whether stories were built around a single character or an institution, as opposed to no central protagonist. Who or what, in other words, were the stories emphasizing, if anyone or anything? As a group, the news magazines built 27% of their stories around a single personality, 5% less than newspapers.

Here U.S. News again stood out. It was the least likely to make its stories character-focused, doing so just 19 percent of the time, versus 35 percent for Time and 27 percent for Newsweek.

The news magazines were even less likely to focus their stories around institutions (only 9 percent of stories).

Similar to the findings in other news media, President Bush was not the main protagonist much of the time in the news magazines. Indeed, Time and Newsweek were both more than twice as likely to be focused on an entertainment celebrity as on the president as a main protagonist. This was not the case at U.S. News, where one was about as likely as the other. Bush did not even dominate political coverage at any of the news magazines. The three publications were twice as likely to build their political stories around some other federal official or politician as they were around the president. Apparently, while popular and highly effective politically, Bush is not the kind of character who makes for compelling magazine copy.

 

Sourcing

In general, readers of the news magazines are told who the sources are. Only 20 percent of all the stories studied contained anonymous sourcing, and many of those were the shorter pieces.

In contrast, more than a quarter of stories (28 percent) contained the highest level of transparent sourcing we counted -- four or more sources where the reporter not only identified them by name but also attempted to explain the source's bias or relationship to the subject.

There are some differences among the magazines in sourcing, but only some. Again, reflecting its more traditional or fact-heavy character, U.S. News was the most likely to run stories with four or more fully identified sources (36 percent). Newsweek was the least likely (21 percent).