Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media staff

Reports that News Corp is spinning off the publishing division cap a year of major changes in news industry ownership. It was the busiest time for newspaper sales since 2007 and witnessed the single largest local TV acquisition in four years. Visit PEJ’s interactive database, to explore financial statistics on more than 4,000 radio and TV stations, newspapers and news websites.

PEJ examines how the health care debate was presented in the press, which party won the messaging war and how the bill has largely disappeared from view.

The Facebook IPO was a hot topic on blogs, Twitter and Facebook last week with doubts about the stock’s value exceeding bullishness on the investment.  And the topics of conversation—which ranged from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding to co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s citizenship—varied by social media platform.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ended his presidential campaign with a final week of unflattering and relatively sparse coverage and Mitt Romney's campaign narrative appeared to benefit from some high profile endorsements.

Local news enthusiasts follow a diverse set of topics, but rely heavily on local newspapers to keep them informed, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project that examined the ways people get news and information about 16 different topics, ranging from breaking news to weather.

It took several weeks after the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin before the story exploded in the media. A new PEJ report reveals how social and mainstream media platforms focused on different elements of the controversy and how ideology influenced coverage on the cable and radio talk shows.

An interactive database of companies that own news properties in the United States. Use the site to compare the companies, explore each media sector or read profiles of individual companies.

Explore the tone and volume of news coverage and Twitter conversations about each presidential candidate in the Campaign 2012 in the Media interactive.

Follow the steps in this interactive to select among media sectors and news coverage categories. The data are based on more than 48,000 stories analyzed in PEJ’s News Coverage Index for the year.

What stories and which people generated the most news coverage in 2011? PEJ's annual Year in the News report offers answers. The Year in News 2011 Interactive allows users to explore the data for themselves.