Director's Notes: Journalism Studies and Results

 

• Sunny in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a city with enormous talent and assets that need to be better leveraged to achieve a well-informed electorate, an accountable leadership and a robust sense of place that acknowledges the New Philadelphia while attending to the Old.  A recent J-Lab study commissioned by the William Penn Foundation measures the state of media and explores a networked journalism collaborative in Philadelphia. 

• Stuck in the Mud. The newsroom diversity movement is stalled. The percentage of minorities working in newsrooms dipped slightly to 13.26 percent last year. The American Society of News Editors said daily newspapers lost another 5,200 jobs in 2009, bringing the total loss of journalists since 2007 to 13,500.  Since 2001, U.S. newsrooms have lost more than 25 percent of their full-time staff positions, bringing the total to 41,500 working journalists. Minorities represented 16 percent of the journalists hired for their first full-time newsrooms job in 2009, the same as a year earlier. Many questions remain on how many journalists of color work for online only news outlets or have launched news media startups. Only a quarter of the online only news organizations contacted by ASNE returned the survey.
• Quote of the Week: "Positive change cannot happen in school reform, the immigration system, in international affairs, nuclear proliferation, or the understanding of Islam...unless vibrant news media engage the American public about the issues." -Susan King/Carnegie Corp.