Online users still turn to newspapers' stories, content

Almost three-quarters of Internet users access newspaper content in some form during a typical week, according to a survey conducted for the Newspaper Association of America. About two-thirds of readers use a digital platform several times a day to read newspaper-generated content, and about the same proportion said they act on digital ads in the paper. "Clearly, newspapers' embrace of multiplatform strategies provides significant opportunities for audience and revenue growth," NAA President Caroline Little said. Meanwhile, another NAA study found that the number of unique adult visitors to newspaper websites increased 4.4 percent in the first quarter compared with the first quarter last year. An analysis of comScore data showed that the number of adult daily visitors increased 10 percent, with an identical increase among 18- to 24-year-olds.

American U launches visual history of significant journalism in six decades

American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop has launched the first comprehensive online visual history of how journalists have helped to save democracy. Some of America’s greatest moments of fearless, independent journalism, and how they changed the course of American history forever, are featured. Investigating Power seeks to answer one of the most pressing questions confronting journalism in this age of shrinking media budgets and newsrooms: How can the American people know the truth about those in power with the future of original, in-depth reporting in question? On 51 high-definition videos, the project interviewed journalists who've brought "truth to power" through their reporting during contemporary U.S. history dating back to 1950. Investigating Power defines six crucial “Moments of Truth,” including the McCarthy era, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Watergate, post 9/11 America, and Corporate Power, and features conversations with Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, Seymour Hersh, Dana Priest, Bob Woodward and the late Daniel Schorr and Mikle Wallace.

Nielsen contradicts Pew on online news use

More than 13 times as many U.S. Internet surfers list pornography and other miscellaneous uses than news, according to a new Nielsen report on social media summarized by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Further, Americans spend more than 22 percent of their web time on blogs and social networks.

Just 2.6 percent of the online audience noted "current events and global news."

This contradicts recent Pew research that shows that reading news online is becoming a regular American pastime. Internet news readership is increasing among consumers of all ages, Pew reports, and 75 percent of online Americans look for news on the web. Other figures suggest that up to 78 percent of Americans look for news online and 21 percent of social users are “News Junkies,” constantly looking for breaking information on the web.

Nielsen's report is being received with more than a little doubt.

"Skeptical readers may note that blogs could relate to news, and portals post news stories, so take that into account," writes Poynter's Steve Myers, who listed Nielsen's findings:

Activity % of Internet time spent on it
Other (including porn) 35.1%
Social networks & blogs 22.5
Online games 9.8
Email 7.6
Portals 4.5
Videos/movies 4.4
Search 4.0
Instant messaging 3.3
Software manufacturer 3.2
Classifieds/auctions 2.9
Current events & global news 2.6

Meanwhile, the New York Times this week noted the supposed drift away from mass-market news could be tied to a fragmentation of the Web.

David Carr writes, "Like newspapers, portals like AOL and Yahoo are confronting the cold fact that there is less general interest in general interest news. Readers have peeled off into verticals of information — TMZ for gossip, Politico for politics and Deadspin for sports, and so on."

News media manipulated on ACORN: study

If you think you know what happened to ACORN, the network of community organizations attacked by politicians and video bloggers over the last few years, check out Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend's article “In ACORN’s Shadow” in the new Columbia Journalism Review.

Schudson, a professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and Sonnevend, a Ph.D. student, examined a political science journal article summarizing a study 647 stories about ACORN during 2007-08, and they found that ACORN’s alleged voter fraud “was absurdly hyped for partisan advantage; the national media were steamrolled into promoting ... a ‘disingenuous controversy’; and ACORN twisted in the wind.”

Analysts Peter Dreier and Christopher R. Martin found that the press was "taken in all too easily by a very effective group of 'opinion entrepreneurs largely indifferent to facts or fairness."

Knight's 'Poetry & Journalism' on IJPC web site

Journalism deputy director Bill Knight this year wrote a paper on journalism and poetry that USC's Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture organization has linked.

The IJPC says:
"POETRY AND JOURNALISM by Bill Knight, Western Illinois University. Before poet and journalist Archibald MacLeish commented on the intersection of poetry and journalism in a lecture at the University of Minnesota 50 years this fall, journalism and poetry had seemed antagonistic or alien to each other for centuries. Knight explores the relationship between poetry and journalism in this thoughtful essay."

Newsroom values eroding: survey

A survey being compiled by the University of Maryland for The Newspaper Guild labor union shows dramatic drops in key press values, according to journalists surveyed for a "Future of News Jobs" survey planned for publication in the next issue of the American Journalism Review.

The top three values when respondents started their newsroom jobs were accuracy, credibility and timeliness, the survey finds. Now, however, "making a profit" is the overwhelming value, at 96.3%, followed by a distant second, "attracting an audience," at 73.2%.

The Guild Reporter's short news story can be viewed here -- http://www.newsguild.org/gr/index.php?ID=4763

'Environmental Journalism' 5 weekends in Quads

Register now for a new course just added to the Spring schedule for WIU/Quad Cities: Environmental Journalism.

Offered as Journalism 400/Topics, the 3-credit-hour class is scheduled to meet on five weekends -- 5:30-8 p.m. Fridays and 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays – Feb. 1-2, 8-9, 15-16, plus March 7-8 and April 4-5.

Whether you want a 400-level elective, a course about a vital topic, or something to count toward a Journalism major or minor, Environmental Journalism could fit.

Team-taught by WIU professor Bill Knight, who writes for GateHouse Media newspapers, and Mark Ridolfi, editorial-page editor at the Quad City Times, Environmental Journalism will be a lecture/seminar format, with special guests, relevant videos, and field trips to a Superfund waste disposal site, a Mississippi River eagle count, and a wind farm.

It will require one inexpensive textbook, one journalistic or academic project, an objective midterm, an essay final exam, and will permit students to post online informal stories they write.

Star# 33968.