Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media staff

For American news magazines, 2008 may be seen as the year when the traditional mass audience model finally collapsed.

Radio is well on its way to becoming something altogether new — a medium called audio.

Largely as a result of the recession, the ethnic media saw a mixed 2008. There were stories of revenue losses, business closings and reorganizations, and also many examples of the ethnic media continuing to fare much better than the mainstream press.

At a time when health care is a major public policy issue, how have the U.S. media covered the complex subject of health? A new report from PEJ and the Kaiser Family Foundation examines those questions.

How have different press outlets covered the 2008 general election? Do cable news channels have clear ideological differences? How does broadcast coverage compare to print? A follow up study to PEJ’s Winning the Media Campaign study focuses on the tone of coverage across media sectors and outlets.

How do the news media cover the issue of immigration? A new PEJ study, produced in collaboration with the Brookings Institution and The University of Southern California Norman Lear Center, reveals the uneven, and episodic nature of the media's approach, based on a close look at the year 2007.

The 2008 race for the White House has been dubbed the first Internet election. What presence have the candidates established online? Has one taken more advantage of this new platform? A new PEJ study examines John McCain and Barack Obama’s Web sites to assess the online campaign.

The Beijing Olympics gave media an opportunity to report on the athletic competition and life inside the world’s most-populous nation. What—and who—got covered? Were there differences by media? And how did that differ from coverage abroad?

In the 2008 election season, religion has been a significant factor for candidates in both parties. But even with the Jeremiah Wright controversy, evangelical voter angst, and a Mormon candidate, the media largely avoided dealing directly with the explosive issue of faith.

Through the 2008 primary election season, two candidates—Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican former governor Mitt Romney—received more media attention about their faith than any of the other candidates combined.

For both, the attention raised concerns about their relig ...