Audiences splinter across ever more platforms

Project for Excellence in Journalism's Annual Report, "The state of the news media 2007," is somber but necessary reading.

The pace of change has accelerated. In the last year, the trends reshaping journalism didn’t just quicken, they seemed to be nearing a pivot point.

On Madison Avenue, talk has turned to whether the business model that has financed the news for more than a century — product advertising — still fits the way people consume media.

With audiences splintering across ever more platforms, nearly every metric for measuring audience is now under challenge as either flawed or obsolete — from circulation in print, to ratings in TV, to page views and unique visitors online.

Every media sector except for two is now losing popularity. Even the number of people who go online for news — or anything else — has stopped growing. Only the ethnic press is up.

Want to find out more? Follow this link to the Project for Excellence in Journalism site. Journalism.org