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Study finds Baltimore Sun’s output has plummeted and "New Media" aren’t yet filling in the gap

January 11, 2010 at 8:18 am 9

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Baltimore media reporting truly new news. (Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism. Click to enlarge.)

by FERN SHEN

Worried about what’s ailing the American news media, researchers from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at one week of Baltimore news coverage last summer and found traditional media — the Sun, television and the business publications — still do most (61 percent) of the original reporting around here.

But the detailed analysis is pretty embarassing for Charm City’s entire “media ecosystem,” as journalism talking heads now refer to the whole cast of news producers in a city, from newspapers with staffs and real estate to kitchen-table-bloggers.

Government press releases – often just repeated verbatim – drive print and pretty much everyone else’s news coverage, for the most part. Minor crimes, like the kid in Medfield arrested for stealing a scooter, pre-occupy broadcast. “New Media” with their relatively minute output, often ignore what the others are doing or simply link to them, sometimes casting news produced by others as if it were their own.

Depressing? Wait, there’s more. Guess how many fewer stories the Sun did in all of 2009, compared with 1991?

73 percent.

Sun shines less

Cynics might say the picture painted by Pew is nothing new, that the news media has always had a lazy side, and blogs and news websites have just joined in with their press-release-lovin’ elders.

But the authors did look back in time and found at least one thing has measurably deteriorated: output. In 1991, when the Sun had a morning and evening paper, they produced 73 percent more stories on any subject than they did last year. In 1999, they produced 32 percent more stories.

In the Associated Press story on the report, Sun editor J. Montgomery Cook doesn’t reference the diminished coverage but complains that a week is too small to show his organization’s stuff.

Source: Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism ("How News Happens")

Here are some other stories on the report:

New York Times

Poynter Institute

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  • Dunn

    Why do we keep reading this trash? The Baltimore Sun can’t even do as much invesigation as the local entertainment blogs. Are we this stupid? Most of its reporting is fed, biased and bad.

    I wish I had a full time job that allowed me to Google search, write for a half-hour and get full medical.

  • http://thealligator.wordpress.com/ Eric

    I guess the quote “If given the choice between a government with no newspaper or a newspaper with no government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter” is no longer relevant, since for all intents and purposes the government is the newspaper.

  • Longliveblogs

    Everyone knew that the Sun is producing much less. What I found interesting about the study is that even in its weakened state, it still is driving the news, both on TV and “new media.”

  • http://benkutil.com Ben Kutil

    Steve Buttry, of Gazette Communications in Iowa has a really great write-up on some of the issues with the study.

    http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/old-media-find-comfort-in-study-of-baltimore-media-they-didnt-look-very-close/

  • http://baltimorespotlight.blogspot.com/ Spotlighter

    Bloggers need income to eat. Without income blogging will always, of necessity, be a sideline to money making activities for bloggers.

  • Steve

    Local news is pathetic. Especially TV news. Thank goodness for the Messenger. Nationally, NPR and NY Times still doing a pretty good job. I really miss the in depth reporting The Sun used to do. Don’t really like online papers. Except for the B.B. I like the tactile quality of a newspaper or magazine. I fear print media is on the way out. What am I going to use as a flyswater or to whack my dog or kids with when they act up.

  • Michele Rosenberg

    Who wants to talk seriously about starting up a real newspaper – weekly for now?

    Get back with me.

  • http://www.buyintobaltimore.com Carson

    I couldn’t find the definition of a story. I wonder if they only counted printed articles or if they also included the content produced solely for the Sun’s website

  • Pingback: 1-22-10: The Thriving and Endangered in Baltimore’s Media Ecosystem « Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast

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