OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Pew releases annual report on state of journalism in America

The report's online section offers some sharp advice for online publishers. Are you listening?

Posted: 2007-03-13

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its fourth annual report on the state of Journalism in America.

The State of the American News Media, 2007

Obviously, one could go a hundred directions in processing this report. But one line in the report's overview stood out to me:

"In a sense all news organizations are becoming more niche players, basing their appeal less on how they cover the news and more on what they cover."

Bingo. If I could get news publishers to understand just one lesson from the Internet era, it would be that. To rephrase, it's not about the new medium, it's the new competition. And with so much competition, you've got to find a niche to own, one that you cover better than any of your new competitors can.

I'll also draw your attention to some data from the report's section on citizen media. They are from Pew Internet & American Life Project surveys on "Web 2.0 Activities" and I think they are vital for "citizen media" publishers to understand.

The most popular activities listed were "Uploaded photos online where others can see them," done by a reported 38 percent of Web users in December of last year, and "Rated a product, service or person using an online rating system," done by a reported 32 percent.

At the bottom of the list was "Created or worked on your own online journal or blog," done by just 8 percent of Web users.

Why is this important? Because it illustrates the point I've been making for years in that it is asking too much for readers to become full-fledged journalists in contributing to a CitJ website. Increase your site's opportunity for success by asking readers to do less: to upload a photo, rate a restaurant, submit a calendar listing, file an incident report, etc. Allow the citizen journalism to happen in the automated aggregation of these plentiful individual reports, rather than waiting for a tiny slice of motivated readers to put it all together for you.

FWIW, I wish the report's data had included information asking how many Web users had submitted comments to a webpage or participated on a discussion board. Those are two other relatively popular online activities that don't require nearly the amount of reporting, writing and editing work as creating and maintain a blog.

Responses:

From Suzanne Batchelor on March 13, 2007 at 7:07 PM

It makes sense to me that only a small minority of readers (or citizens) report news as 'citizen journalists,' and that making the larger group of readers comfortable participants by means of small interactions is both welcoming and wise. Later, one issue -- feeling strongly about the need for a stop sign at a neighborhood intersection, for example -- might motivate a reader already comfortable with submitting the occasional hailstorm photo to stake out the intersection, take traffic photos, gather near-collision stories from neighbors, etc. -- and submit these as a citizen report. I'd guess that most readers have all they can handle with work and family. Providing a bit of the puzzle would be just right for them -- your aggregation.