Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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Publications

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    Disapproval of GOP Congressional Leaders, But Democrats Fare No Better

    Summary of Findings The American public is not happy with the nation’s political leadership. President Bush’s approval rating remains below 50%, and just 39% approve of the job performance of Republican congressional leaders. Despite the paltry ratings for GOP leaders, however, Democrats have failed to benefit. The public has about the same low regard for […]

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    Girls lead the way in using the internet to hunt for colleges and other schools

    Fully 45% of American adult internet users and 57% of online teenagers have used the internet when they search for colleges or other schools to attend. Older teenage girls are the most likely to do this: 79% of online teenage girls ages 15-17 have used the internet to search for schools or colleges. Surveys of […]

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    One in five downloaders has copied files from other people’s iPods or MP3 players

    WASHINGTON, March 23 — About 36 million Americans—or 27% of internet users—say they download either music or video files and about half of them have found ways outside of traditional peer-to-peer networks or paid online services to gather and swap their files, according to the most recent survey of the Pew Internet & American Life […]

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    College Searching Online

    The majority of teens and nearly half of online adults use the internet to search for colleges or schools.

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    State of the News Media 2005: Newspapers

    There were high hopes in many quarters of the newspaper industry in 2004. The 2000-2003 recession was expected to give way to an economic rebound. Publishers expected advertising revenue to come roaring back as it traditionally does in the early stages of a recovery. Investors, who had bid up stock prices based on newspapers’ steady profitability and cyclical nature, were expecting their ship to come in. Editors, faced with deep cuts in 2001 and flat staffing and budgets since, were looking for reinvestments in news gathering.

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    State of the News Media 2005: Online

    Look into cyberspace and the picture for journalism seems fractured. There is real hope in the numbers of people who seek news online, particularly the young, a group that shows scant interest in traditional media. The capability of people to get what they want when they want it, and to manipulate it, edit it and seek more depth, could bring a needed revival to journalism. The economic numbers are also growing – and dramatically – each year. Yet look at the content offered in online journalism in 2004 and there are signs of frustration, lack of innovation and the caution of the old media applied to the new.