Wednesday, March 19, 2008

State of the Media 2008 Suggests Opportunities, Directions for New Ventures


Younger audiences, it turns out, are interested in news. But they want it from new platforms that can deliver it in new ways and on the consumers’ new terms.

Source: stateofthenewsmedia.org



That sounds like opportunity knocking to me. Every year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism completes a comprehensive study they call "State of the News Media" which is exemplary in several ways. I will be writing about it for a couple of days, because there is so much to note in this report.



The State of the News reports are published online, and though in the early years (2004) they had some confusion delivering dynamic pages to browsers other than IE, and initially they relied too heavily on .pdfs, the format is a study in itself. The report is modular, featuring ten sections in the overview, and 13 chapters. The report can be read from cover to cover using a "next" button, and then going through the chapters sequentially. However, a user can just dive into any module of interest, as well. The links to dive into a section and get back out to the Overview or other sections are well-designed.

Each of the media studied, from Newspapers to Ethnic media, by way of Online, TV (separated into Network, Cable, Local), and Radio has a narrative chapter and a dynamic data-driven chart and table builder. This feature allows the user to read about the major ideas in a chapter, but then hone in on particulars by generating their own views of the data. This is very smart, as you can see in the screen-grab.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/biverson/2345620064/" title="chartscreengrab.png by biverson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3231/2345620064_4983109d05_o.jpg" width="514" height="261" alt="chartscreengrab.png" /></a>

The survey of journalists section is useful in itself, but is linked up to past surveys for those who refer to the past, so they can have a context for understanding the present.

That is my report for today. Tune-in as we go through the report and tease out some new conclusions that entrepreneurs and academics should be studying in order to be avoid viewing the past through the rearview mirror.


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Posted by barbara i at 9:14 AM

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