Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media staff

As 2010 began, several existential questions hung over the American magazine industry.

Most people still listen to news, talk and music for at least a little while every week, and they do most of this listening through traditional broadcast, or “terrestrial,” radio. This is where the audience is largest. Yet this is where the profit and revenue are under the most pressure. Many stations have left the air and some owners of multiple stations have entered bankruptcy.

In a year that saw the inauguration of the country’s first black president and the arrival on the Supreme Court of the first Hispanic justice, the ethnic news media managed to stay in relatively good health, despite the worst recession since the Great Depression, although some bruises and scars were picked up along the way.

The economic downturn has made headlines for months. How has the press covered the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression? What elements of the economic story make the most news? Who is driving the coverage? PEJ addresses these questions and more in a new report on press coverage of the economy.

One common thread between the Obama and Bush administrations is their commitment to advancing the "faith-based" initiative. Yet a new study by PEJ and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that the media created two very different narratives in the early days of the two presidencies.

Coverage of health news is on the rise according to an examination of media coverage from January to June 2009. Which health news topics generated the biggest headlines in 2009? What media sectors pay the most attention to health care? These questions and more are answered in a new study, produced by PEJ and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In the past two decades, the makeup of the Washington D.C. press corps has been fundamentally transformed. While the old media have shrunk alarmingly, two new elements have risen up to virtually replace them in number. What are the implications for news consumers in the U.S. and abroad?

How have the news media covered the early days of the Obama presidency? How does that coverage stack up against that of his predecessors? A new study examines the tone and focus of Obama’s media narrative and how compares it to Bill Clinton’s and George Bush’s.

News web sites can instantly measure which stories and features are popular and which are bombing at the online box office. How are journalists using this instantaneous data, and is the net effect positive or not?

How popular was local television as a source for news in 2008? How did ratings for morning, evening and late night newscasts fare? These questions and more are answered in the Local TV chapter of the State of the News Media 2009 report.