Analysis: Our Commentaries and Backgrounders
This section, Commentaries and Backgrounders, contains our more concise research analyses, such as op eds, articles, speeches, and quick reports. These are distinguished from our more detailed empirical research studies. They are listed below in chronological order. Or you can use the menus on the left to filter our entire archive and find exactly what you want.
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| April 27, 2009 |
| 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?
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| March 30, 2009 |
| Online news is a rapidly changing media platform. Are Web journalists optimistic about the future? Is the Internet altering the fundamental values of journalism? These questions and more are answered in a survey of online journalists.
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| March 26, 2009 |
| 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. |
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| March 25, 2009 |
| 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.
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| March 22, 2009 |
| 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. |
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| October 10, 2008 |
| The 2008 race for the White House has once again seen intensifying complaints about media bias, most recently from the McCain camp. The charges have ranged from liberalism, to sexism, and more. A new PEJ review offers an historical perspective on the evolution of the tenuous relationship between press and political leaders.
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| September 5, 2008 |
| PEJ gauges online buzz during the Democratic and Republican conventions. |
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| August 20, 2008 |
| A new Pew Research Center survey finds people using various traditional media at historically low levels. But the more telling findings here are not where people get news but how. In a commentary, PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel sees the outlines of a new "On Demand" Media Culture. |
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| March 26, 2008 |
| The tactical success of the surge and the tactical failures of the new Democratic Congress are among the reasons why the five-year-old conflict seems to have disappeared from the headlines. And then there are the competing demands of covering the most intriguing presidential campaign in recent memory.
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| January 4, 2008 |
| The media were busy anointing winners after the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. And the theme of change and surprise also resonated throughout much of the commentary. But a PEJ look at the caucus post-mortems finds that perhaps the most distinct aspect of the coverage was the certainty that something major had occurred that night in Iowa.
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