The state of news media

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A great report just out by the Project for Excellence in Journalism on The State of the News Media 2006, focusing on the US news industry. It provides detailed analysis across all news media, including newspapers, online, TV, radio, alternative and more. The new major emerging trends they picked out this year are:

* The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories.

* The species of newspaper that may be most threatened is the big-city metro paper that came to dominate in the latter part of the 20th century.

* At many media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over.

* That said, traditional media do appear to be moving toward technological innovation – finally.

* The new challenge to the old media, the aggregators, are also playing with limited time.

* The central economic question in journalism continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major economic engine, and if will ever be as big as print or television.

Underlying these trends is the game being played between traditional media and new media organizations, with a large convergent space in the middle, and possibly the beginnings of hardball tactics as we have seen in the music industry over the last years.