NewspapersHow the Media Covered the 2012 Primary CampaignAs the 2012 presidential race shifts from the GOP primary 
0.3% - Amount of coverage devoted to the situation in Egypt last month Last week, representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood—which has emerged as a potent political force in post-Mubarak Egypt—visited the U.S. for the first time and met with White House officials. Despite the significance of the trip and the Brotherhood’s role in strategically crucial Egypt, that subject accounted for less than 1% of the newshole from April 2-8, 2012, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. It has now been over a year since protests and violence swept across the Middle East and ushered in what became widely known as the Arab Spring. This wave of unrest dominated news coverage and propelled international stories to the forefront of the U.S. news agenda. In February and March 2011, the upheaval in the region was the No. 1 story in the media. In April 2011, it was No. 2, behind only the U.S. economy. But even as the aftermath of the uprisings continue to play out with violence and political turmoil, attention to the Arab Spring has dramatically declined and is now virtually off the media radar screen. That is particularly true in the two countries—Egypt and Libya—that had generated the most attention in the U.S. media. Last year, Egypt’s coverage peaked in February 2011 after longtime president Hosni Mubarak stepped down amid massive protests. In that month, attention to that country accounted for 22% of the newshole. Since that high point, coverage of Egypt has dropped dramatically, never accounting for more than 1% in a given month, except for November 2011, when coverage climbed to 4% as the nation held its first democratic elections. A very similar trend in coverage occurred with Libya. In March 2011, coverage of the conflict in that nation accounted for 27% of the newshole, with most of the attention focused on the U.S. and NATO’s decision to enter the conflict. The months following saw the Libyan conflict fade steadily from the mainstream news agenda, producing sporadic spikes in coverage in August 2011 when Muammar Gaddafi’s compound was seized (8%), and in October 2011 when Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebel forces (5%). Since November 2011, coverage of the Libyan conflict, which still persists, has accounted for less than 1% of the newshole every month. The current focus of attention in the Mideast is Syria, where violence between government forces and their opponents is reported to have claimed about 9,000 lives. But unlike Egypt and Libya, Syria’s uprising has never dominated news coverage and has, in fact, generated consistently modest to negligible attention. Since PEJ began monitoring the Syrian conflict in March 2011, coverage has exceeded 3% of the newshole in only one month. That was February 2012 (7% of the newshole) when two prominent journalists were killed in Syria, and U.S. officials decided to close its Syrian embassy. Monica Anderson of PEJ Most adults follow local news closely, relying on local newspapers and other sourcesNearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need. In fact, local news enthusiasts are substantially more wedded to their local newspapers than others. They are much more likely than others to say that if their local newspaper vanished, it would have a major impact on their ability to get the local information they want. This is especially true of local news followers age 40 and older, who differ from younger local news enthusiasts in some key ways. One-third of local news enthusiasts (32%) say it would have a major impact on them if their local newspaper no longer existed, compared with just 19% of those less interested in local news. Most likely to report a major impact if their newspaper disappeared are local news followers age 40 and older (35%), though even among younger local news followers 26% say losing the local paper would have a major impact on them. In contrast, just 19% of adults who do not follow local news closely say they would feel a major impact and fully half (51%) say they would feel no impact at all from the loss of their local paper. Only 34% of local news enthusiasts feel this way. These local news and information consumers stand out from other adults in several respects related to community attachment, general interest in all types of news, use of sources for local news and information, and the particular topics of interest to them on the local scene. As a whole, local news enthusiasts do not stand out from other adults in their use of technology or in the way they use technology to participate in local affairs, such as sending around links or posting comments on websites. However, among local news enthusiasts there are considerable differences in technology use across generations. These are among the main findings in a nationally representative phone survey of 2,251 adults by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It focused on the ways people get information and news about 16 different topics, ranging from breaking news to weather to crime to schools information. The survey was administered from January 12-25, 2011 on landline and cell phones. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. And here are some of the main findings, as they apply to the group who identified themselves as local news enthusiasts:Local news enthusiasts are more connected to their communityAdults who follow local news closely are fairly diverse in their age, though they skew older, more female, and more African-American as a group when compared with adults who do not follow local news as closely. They are also more likely to describe themselves as politically conservative and to attend religious services on a weekly basis when compared with those who are not consistent local news consumers. Local news consumers are more connected to their communities than others, both in length of time in the community and in their connection with neighbors, and more likely to think they can improve their communities. Roughly three in 10 have lived in their community 20 years or longer (32% vs. 20% of others), and thus not surprisingly are more likely to know all of their neighbors. This is driven largely by local news enthusiasts age 40 and older. As a whole, local news enthusiasts are also slightly more likely than other adults to believe they can have a big impact on making their community a better place to live. Local news enthusiasts' news consumption habits differ from other adultsIn addition to local news, this group is more actively engaged than others in following news in general, and international and national news specifically. Sixty-three percent enjoy keeping up with news "a lot" compared with 35% of other adults. This is especially true of older local news enthusiasts (age 40 and older), 72% of whom say they enjoy keeping up with new "a lot." Six in 10 local news followers (63%) also follow international news closely most of the time regardless of whether something is happening or not and 78% follow national news this closely. In comparison, 39% of other adults follow international news this closely and 46% follow national news this closely. When it comes to sources of local news and information, 35% of local news enthusiasts say that local news sources give them all of the information that matters to them, 10 percentage points higher than those less interested in local news. They also use more sources of local news and information per week than others (mean of 3.77 vs. 2.84). The youngest local news enthusiasts, those age 18-39, use the greatest number of local news sources weekly, with a mean of 4.38. Local news enthusiasts are interested in many local topics. This group is more likely than other adults to follow 12 out of 16 local news topics asked about - including weather, breaking news, politics, crime and schools/education. In many cases, interest in particular topics is driven by older local news enthusiasts (weather, politics, crime, traffic, taxes, and local government activity, social services and zoning), while interest in other topics lies mainly with younger local news followers (job openings, restaurants). For 14 of these 16 topics, the local newspaper is local news enthusiasts' preferred source of information (or tied at the top with another source). Overall, local television news is the preferred source for just four topics, while the internet is preferred for just three of the 16 asked about. While this seems to be positive news for newspapers, in many cases the reliance on newspapers is heaviest among older local news enthusiasts, while younger local news followers rely more heavily on other sources. 
72% of Americans Follow Local News Closely (PDF) INTERACTIVE: How People Learn about their Local Community DOWNLOAD PDF: How People Learn about their Local Community Where People Get Information about Restaurants and Local Businesses Survey: Mobile News & Paying Online
1st - Rank of health care reform among mainstream news topics last week Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court began its much anticipated hearings on the Obama Administration’s health care reform law, focusing largely on its fundamental provision— the requirement that all individuals carry health insurance. Given the stakes of those hearings, media attention to the health care issue accounted for 21% of the newshole from March 26-April 1, making it the week’s No. 1 story and representing the most coverage since Barack Obama signed the historic bill into law the week of March 22-28, 2010 (45% of the newshole). Indeed, until recently, the health care debate—which raged in the summer of 2009 and early 2010—had almost dropped off the media radar screen. In the third quarter of 2009, with passions fueled by angry town hall meetings, coverage of the health care debate accounted for 18% of the newshole, making it the No. 1 story that period. And during the legislative and political struggle that culminated in the passage of the measure, coverage accounted for 13% in the last quarter of 2009 and 14% the first quarter of 2010—with the subject remaining the top story in that period. But since health care reform became law—and despite expectations it would be the dominant factor in the 2010 midterm elections—coverage of the subject has never exceeded 2% of the overall newshole in any quarter from April 2010 through December 2011. That changed in the first three months of 2012, with coverage rising to 5% of the newshole. The week of February 6-12, the story first made a comeback (9% of the newshole) as the debate over whether religious institutions should be forced to cover contraception in their health insurance plans emerged as a major issue. Four weeks later, Rush Limbaugh’s controversial comments about a Georgetown law student helped drive coverage (10%) from March 5-11. That was followed by the Supreme Court hearings, which pushed media attention to a two-year high. Tricia Sartor of PEJ Almost immediately after the February 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, the conversation about the case began simmering on Twitter. But it was nearly three weeks later, on March 17-after the release of 911 tapes-before the story exploded on Twitter, on blogs and in the mainstream media to become the first story of the year to get more coverage than the race for the president.
As attention to the story surged, the focus within these three parts of our media culture varied greatly, according to a special report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. On Twitter, the conversation has focused on sympathy for the slain teenager and expressions of outrage at the killing. On blogs, the emphasis has been on the role of race in the highly charged case. In the mainstream media, the Trayvon Martin controversy was heavily a cable news and talk radio story. And there, the primary discussion has focused on two politically oriented issues-gun control laws and the Florida Stand Your Ground statute, which gives citizens the right to use deadly force when they believe they are being threatened. Moreover, the Martin story has been a much bigger story on MSNBC, whose talk show hosts are liberal, and a much smaller story on Fox, whose prime time lineup leans conservative. The focus of the discussion differs as well. Conservative talkers paid the most attention to questions about who Martin is and to the defense of the man who pulled the trigger, George Zimmerman. Liberal hosts focused primarily on gun control and the Florida law. A Story that Took Two Weeks to EmergeTravyon Martin, the 17-year-old African American walking home from a convenience store, was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman on February 26. In the days immediately after, the shooting got more attention in social media than in the national mainstream press, though even on Twitter and in blogs the attention was still fairly modest. That changed on March 17 after the release of 911 audio tapes of Zimmerman calling police who advised him not to follow Martin. The volume on Twitter doubled overnight and continued to rise for the next several days.[1] The same thing happened in the blogosphere, where the discussion had been minimal at the outset. 
The same triggering event also jump started coverage in the national press. According to PEJ's News Coverage Index, the Trayvon Martin story became the No.1 story after the 17th, filling 19% of the newshole studied from March 19-27 -exceeding coverage of the presidential campaign (14%). This was the first story of the year to get more attention than the campaign in any given week. Most of that attention came from cable news and talk radio. 
Differing Focus By MediaYet while all three sectors of media were suddenly trained on the event, their focus was just as striking for how it differed. On Twitter, the conversation focused heavily on calls for justice (21% of the statements about the case) and sympathy for the victim and his family (19%). Together those two themes made up 40% of all the discussion about the case, which included millions of tweets on the subject over the 11 days since it became a major story. On blogs, the No. 1 theme of the conversation (accounting for 15% of it) was the role of race. That was followed calls for justice (13%). And on cable news and talk radio, the most discussed topic was legalistic, the subject of gun control and Florida's Stand Your Ground law. That accounted for 17% of the airtime devoted to the case.[2] That was followed by questions about Trayvon Martin and defense of George Zimmerman. 
MSNBC, with a liberal prime time lineup, devoted the largest portion of its newshole to the story. Fully 49% of MSNBC programming studied was dedicated to the case. On CNN, the case made up 40% of the hours studied during the period. Fox News covered the story much less than the other two outlets. It devoted 15% of its airtime studied to the case. Not only did the three cable news channels cover the story to different degrees. They homed in on different aspects of the case. MSNBC devoted the most attention the gun control issue and Florida's Stand Your Ground law. The second-most popular topic on MSNBC was the city of Sanford, including discussion of its police force and the city's rocky racial history. The leading theme of CNN's coverage of the case involved questions about Trayvon Martin and the defense of Zimmerman followed closely by straight news accounts. On Fox, questions about Trayvon Martin's past and statements in defense of George Zimmerman also garnered the most attention by far. That was followed by attention to the media's handling of the story. 
Some of these differences in approach can be seen in how the three channels handled a mid-afternoon March 26 press conference called by Trayvon Martin's family. MSNBC showed the press conference live for over 14 minutes, with no commercial interruptions or comments or summary by the new hosts. CNN also provided live coverage of the press conference, but for less time than MSNBC, a little over five minutes. Fox did not show any footage from the press conference when it was occurring and did not discuss the case in that hour. When coverage is broken down by the ideology of the talk show host-both in talk radio and cable-there are also differences. The No. 1 storyline among liberal talkers was gun control and the Florida law followed by a discussion of the remark by Fox News' Geraldo Rivera blaming the hoodie for Trayvon Martin's death. Among conservative talkers, the top subject included questions about Trayvon and a defense of Zimmerman, followed by a discussion of the media's handling of the story. The news agendas in social media, meanwhile, varied significantly from that of the mainstream press. The most prominent topic on cable and talk radio-gun control and the Florida Stand Your Ground law-was considerably farther down the list on both Twitter and blogs. Conversely, sympathy for Trayvon-a major topic in social media-was not nearly as popular in the cable and talk radio universe. But there were also significant differences in focus between the blogosphere and Twitter universe. On Twitter, where the 140 character limit impacts the depth of the discussion, the combined topics of sympathy for Trayvon Martin and calls for justice accounted for 40% of the statements. On blogs these themes were significant, but not nearly as prominent, accounting for one quarter (25%) of the conversation. There gun control/the Florida law and the role of race were bigger issues, accounting for 26% of the conversation studied versus 15% on Twitter. On other topics connected to the case, there was less divergence between the two social media forms. That was certainly the case regarding expressions of skepticism about the victim and a defense of the shooter, which accounted for 7% on blogs and 6% on Twitter. (On cable and talk radio, that theme was twice as prominent, at 14%). In other words, in social media support for Trayvon and outrage at the killing far outweighed any sense that Zimmerman might have been justified in his actions. On cable and talk radio, suspicion of Trayvon Martin was virtually equal to doubts about George Zimmerman. 
Despite new developments in the story itself, the leading frames in social media did not change much over time. On blogs, there was negligible change in the focus of the conversation. On Twitter, there was some diminution in attention to both supportive tweets about Trayvon Martin and his family and outrage at the killing as the story played on. The former dropped from 19% on March 17 to 12% on March 28 while the latter fell from 25% to 20% in that time period. On cable news and talk radio however, the themes of the coverage shifted more according to ideology (as discussed above) than to timeframe. Still, one theme spiked dramatically as time went on: the media's handling of the story. It was not much of a theme at all in the beginning, accounting for 1% of the coverage studied. Later, that number jumped to 13%. FOOTNOTES [1] Twitter volume doubled to an average of 338,000 per day. For comparison, in the 3 days after the Kony 2012 story hit Twitter (March 7-9), there were an average of 1,380,900 statements per day. And, the day following Obama's Jan 24 SOTU speech (Jan 25), there were 1,362,200 statements. In the day following the death of Osama bin Laden (May 1), there were approximately 4 million statements. [2] None of the cable programs that are included in PEJ's regular coding are broadcast on weekends. However, there was some coverage of the topic on other cable and network television broadcasts the weekend of March 17th and 18th, evidence that the story had penetrated the national media by then.
#4 - Rank of the deadly shooting spree among biggest weeks of Afghanistan news U.S. media coverage of the war in Afghanistan has been sporadic and often sparse. For all of 2011, for example, the decade-long conflict accounted for only 1.9% of the newshole. But so far in 2012, coverage has doubled and the March 11 massacre of 16 civilians in Afghanistan, allegedly by Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, pushed media attention of the war to a level not seen in 16 months. From May 12-18, the conflict accounted for 19.3% of the newshole, making it the fourth biggest week of Afghanistan news since PEJ began the News Coverage Index in January 2007. Several of the biggest weeks of news about Afghanistan involved coverage of U.S. policy and strategy in the conflict. The No. 1 week of war-related news was President Obama’s announcement that he would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and establishing an 18-month timetable for troop drawdown. That week, November 30-December 6, 2009, the story accounted for 27.1% of the newshole. The second biggest week occurred after the firing of General Stanley McChrystal following his disparaging comments about Obama’s Afghanistan policy, which appeared in a Rolling Stone article. The week of June 21-27, 2010, this story accounted for 24.8% of the newshole. The No. 3 week of Afghanistan news was October 5-11, 2009 when there were signs of internal disagreement in the Obama Administration about what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. The war accounted for 19.6% of the newshole that week. The release of 90,000 secret military documents related to the Afghanistan conflict, through the site Wikileaks, accounted for 19.2% of the newshole July 26-August 1, 2010—making it the fifth biggest week of news about Afghanistan. Tricia Sartor of PEJ
No. 5 - Rank of last week’s tornadoes among the top weather stories of the past year The dozens of tornadoes that tore across the South and Midwest causing 41 deaths last week attracted major media attention. From February 27-March 4, coverage of the tornadoes filled 8% of the newshole, making it the No. 2 story behind the presidential campaign (26%), but ahead of the violence in Syria (6%), the Chandra, Ohio school shooting (6%), and the economy (6%). Indeed, the tornadoes are the first weather story in almost six months to account for more than 3% of the newshole—and they follow a winter that provided few newsmaking storms. Overall, last week’s violent storms represented the fifth biggest weather story in the past 12 months. The single biggest weather story in the past 12 months was the EF5 tornado that destroyed one quarter of the town of Joplin, Missouri, including the hospital and high school. The week of May 23-29, 2011 that tragic story accounted for 22% of the newshole. After that came Hurricane Irene, which affected virtually the entire Eastern seaboard and filled 21% of the newshole from August 22-28, 2011. As flooding continued, the story filled another 20% the following week (August 29-September 4). The third biggest weather story in the past year was a rash of tornadoes across the South, Midwest and Northeast that killed more than 300 people and, accounted for 15% of the newshole the week of April 25-May 1. The No. 4 weather story was the Mississippi River flooding that accounted for 9% of the newshole the week of May 9-15, 2011. Perhaps due to the mild weather in parts of the U.S., there were no weather events that generated major coverage during the 2011-2012 winter season. The biggest snowstorm story this past winter (at 3% from October 31-November 6) was the early snowfall that led to a “white Halloween” in the Northeast. In contrast, one year earlier, in the winter of 2010-2011, there were four bouts of severe weather that filled between 4% and 13% of the newshole. Tricia Sartor of PEJ The Search for a New Business ModelHow close are America's beleaguered newspapers to solving their revenue problems? A new report from PEJ that includes detailed case studies of dozens of daily papers and interviews with newspaper company executives finds an industry struggling to reinvent itself, but also some hopeful success stories.
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