Cause & Effect: 'Thinner' Newscasts + Newspapers=Fewer Readers & Viewers

 (Photo credit: eszter)

The annual State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism reflects the consequences of pared down tv newscasts and shrinking newspapers--a disappearing audience.

According to an Associated Press account of the Pew study, which surveyed 2,000 consumers earlier this year, fewer and/or less complete news stories prepared by financially strapped media outlets prompted nearly a third of those questioned to abandon a news outlet as an information source. Local television newscasts took it on the chin in the Pew study, which found only 28 percent of adults under age 30 questioned regularly watch local news, compared to 42 percent in 2006. As for the newscasts themselves, Pew noted 40 percent of the content concerned weather, traffic and sports. Government coverage by local tv newsrooms has dropped by 50 percent since 2005.

The Pew survey hits keep on coming: newspaper newsroom employment shrank 30 percent from its peak in 2000 to fewer than 40,000, the lowest figure since 1978, the AP story noted.