Pew Poll: Journalism Headed in Wrong Direction

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Hardly Pollyannaish in the best of times, print and broadcast journalists polled recently by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reflect a particularly bleak outlook toward their profession, The New York Times reports.

More than 350 journalists from the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Assn. responded to the poll conducted last December and January. Of the print journalists queried, 48 percent believe their news organizations will become insolvent within a decade barring a major infusion of income. Roughly 18 percent of  print editors polled said their publications are activelyconsidering charging readers for access to Web site content and another 58 percent said the notion is on their employers' radar.

Fifty-eight percent of the poll participants contend that journalism is headed in the wrong direction. Broadcast journalists weighed in with reasons for the decline, including unreasonably high profit margin expectations among media owners and a slow response by traditional media to invest in the Internet.

Despite the grim state of affairs, nearly three-quarters of the journalists who responded to the poll oppose direct government or interest-group financial support of their institutions.