Rosenstiel Interviewed on 2007 State of the Media Report

by Mark Glaser, Freelance Journalist, Host - MediaShift, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/03/state_of_the_news_media_2007pr.html

PBS MediaShift's Mark Glaser recently interviewed Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) Director and CCJ Vice-Chairman Tom Rosenstiel about PEJ's 2007 State of the American News Media Report. For the first time the report included an analysis of major new websites. The sites were judged in five categories: user customization, user participation, use of multimedia, story depth, and editorial branding. Rosenstiel explains how the sites that were analyzed were chosen and provides context for why some graded higher than others.

Rosenstiel also explains how PEJ's focus has changed over the years and what the State of the Media report has meant to the organization and those who've read it. Glaser focuses in depth on Rosenstiel's views on how digital technologies are changing, and should change, the way news organizations present the news and view themselves economically.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:In reference to how PEJ chose the 38 websites they analyzed for the report, Rosenstiel said:What sites you include is less important than what you are analyzing. It’s not a critique of the individual sites but a more systematic look at different personalities of the sites…

And those styles don’t necessarily have to do with their root media. The New York Times for example, is in a different website grouping than the Washington Post…

The Washington Post is trying to create a new environment [online] that is not the newspaper, and The New York Times is really trying to sell you the New York Times online — it’s not as drastically a different environment.

Rosenstiel commented on whether PEJ would be looking more into the way digital technologies are changing traditional advertising models and newsgathering methods: In 2003, we started to work on the first annual report, which came out in 2004. What became clear in 2003 was that the audience was going online. You just looked at the age breakdown and saw that journalism of the future would be online because that’s where all the young people got their news. Now, three and a half years later, instead of our writing ‘the audience is moving online but the resources are not, the traditional media sites are basically shovelware, they’re posting the material from root or old media,’ that’s no longer the case. It’s not to say that the traditional media websites are spectacular, but they have clearly shifted their emphasis, and it’s not unusual to see pronouncements like the one from the L.A. Times that their website would be their primary medium and that the newspaper would be viewed as a secondary product. Which of course isn’t the case financially or intellectually or in practice. The fact that the company announced that it was their intention is not unheard of, and is a signal that there’s been a dramatic shift in perception in the last three years, if not in reality...

On why PEJ looks at ratings and revenue as a part of its analysis:You can’t ignore the end product and quality — ultimately that’s what matters to citizens, and journalism is only important in how it informs and helps citizens. The First Amendment is a citizen right, it doesn’t belong to the news business. I also think you can’t understand what’s occuring inside the newsroom unless you understand what’s going on in the business side. Our approach is to start with content analysis and try to give an actual empirical judgment about what the media is doing. And then we walk back from that and say “why?” and look at the revenues and profit, and look at the number of reporters in the field and look at audience.

Click here to read Glaser's interview with Rosenstiel in its entirety on the PBS MediaShift website.