The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its massive State of the News Media 2012 study, complete with buzzword-littered general conclusions that seem obvious to anyone following this stuff even a little bit: something something smartphones, tablets, social media, mobile apps, Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, kaboom. But wait, there’s more!
The findings are illustrated with loads of detailed databases, figures, charts, and graphs, like this fascinating and slightly terrifying list of Who Owns the News Media. (Hint: Very few companies.)
Poynter, which chronicles this stuff on a daily basis, has spent some time with the numbers and essays, pulling out a few interesting tidbits while highlighting some future-of-media hype (“On average, news sites get only 9 percent of their traffic from social media”) and silver linings (“Local television is growing audience”).
But for print media, it’s mostly the same old story: Publications printed on paper are attempting innovations like coupons and online pay walls because digital ads aren’t profitable enough, but they’re still losing their audience along the way. In fact, websites saw a rise of 17 percent in audience over the last year, while network TV, local TV, cable, and even audio also got little boosts. The two mediums to see eyeballs drop were magazines, barely, and predictably for media pessimists, newspapers.
