The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study of a news ecosystem yesterday. The study examined the coverage of six major storylines by traditional and new media over a one-week period in Baltimore. There were a lot of interesting findings, and the one that has generated the most buzz is that 95 percent of the stories that contained new information came from traditional media, most of them newspapers.

The study, and that point about the 95 percent in particular, has spurred  a lot of reaction online. Traditional media, as one can imagine, has held up the study as reaffirmation of the important role they still occupy in the media landscape, while much criticism has emerged from the new media quarters about the study’s limitations and flaws. After reading some of these critiques, here are my suggestions for how to fix those flaws:

1. Instead of Baltimore, pick a market with a much, much bigger online media presence.
2. Instead of the six storylines that were studied, pick six subjects that new media tend to focus on and old media tend to ignore.
3. If the results still do not come out in new media’s favor, place findings into hat, wave magic wand, and — POOF! — pull out new-media-friendly results.

The reactions to this study are a perfect demonstration of the reasons why I’ve become increasingly jaded with the online media discussion. I’ll get to that in a second, but first, a couple thoughts on the study itself:

• I thought the study was fairly even-handed in its reporting of the findings. Upon reading the whole report, it didn’t strike me as being skewed in favor of traditional media. In fact, many of its findings are more condemnation than praise — such as the fact that 83 percent of the stories were essentially repetitive or that 62 percent of the coverage originated from the government.
• I love the detailed way in which the study tracked how a particular story developed. It’s the kind of in-depth study that we haven’t seen enough of.
• The scope of the study is indeed fairly limited (six stories, one week, one market), but I suppose such confines are necessary to make the study more manageable. I would definitely like to see more of such studies, with different stories in the same market and in different markets as well. However, I felt that the study was upfront about its limitations. In fact, it said (emphasis added by me):

This study is only one attempt at trying to understand who is producing news and the character of what is produced. Additional reports could tell more. But this snapshot was in many ways a typical week—marked by stories about police shootings, state budget cuts, swine flu, a big international soccer game in town and a mix of fires, accidents, traffic and weather.

The array of local outlets within this snapshot is already substantial, and as times goes on, new media, specialized outlets and local bloggers are almost certain to grow in number and expand their capacity, particularly if the Sun and other legacy media continue to shrink. New outlets such as local news aggregators, who combine this increasingly mixed universe into one online destination, have cropped up in some other cities such as San Diego. There is a good deal of innovation going on around the country, much of it exciting and promising. But as of 2009, this is what the news looks like in one American city.

To me, that passage there, along with other parts of the report that clearly state its limitations, is a pretty obvious caution for its audience to not draw overly broad conclusions from the findings. Alas, best of intentions …

The Reactions

Predictably, the new-media camp mostly did not take too kindly to the findings of the report and didn’t waste much time trying to discredit it. For instance, Jeff Jarvis reacted with “no shit!” (but it’s a detailed and nuanced “no shit”). Steve Buttry says the study “has too many flaws and limitations to be taken very seriously.” Granted, Jarvis and Buttry both said the study had some value, but in the context of their posts, that compliment was akin to when Homer Simpson, in his brief stint as a food critic, blasts a restaurant and then ends with “P.S.: Parking was ample.”

My responses to some of the criticism:

The Issue of Scope

Much of the criticism centers on the limited scope of the study. However, aside from the fact that the study readily admits this, I also wonder if its findings were more favorable to new media, if we would be hearing this complaint at all. Don’t believe me? Let’s hop in the time machine and go back to March 9, 2009 (I know, almost Pre-Cambrian in Internet time). Jay Rosen posted this tweet:

I wrote more about this back then, but the point that’s relevant here is that what Rosen cited were basically two people each counting one day’s worth of stories in one paper — a far narrower scope than the PEJ study. Yet that didn’t stop people from citing those numbers numerous times in the ensuing months as they tried to show newspapers’ declining relevance. Where were the critiques about narrow scope then? Virtually non-existent, of course. Do I really have to connect the dots as to why? And this is hardly a one-time occurrence.

No Shit? Well, Actually, Yes Shit

Jarvis may try to say that we’ve all known all along that most original reporting still come from major media, but I’m not so sure about that. Can somebody please point to evidence of that acknowledgement in the online media discussion? In the example I cited above about the number of local stories in a newspaper, what do you think people were implying (or just flat out claiming) about major media’s role in the changing news ecosystem? Where were the frequent “… but traditional media still produces the bulk of original reporting” reminders then, or in any recent media discussion? And if the idea that traditional media produces the bulk of original reporting is commonly acknowledged, then why the strong reaction to a report giving data to back up that idea? My guess: It’s precisely because that idea isn’t commonly acknowledged among most in the new media camp, even if they know it. And this report puts that idea in a public spotlight and draws attention to it, and that is the threat, from the new-media perspective, because hey, if people are reminded of old media’s importance by numbers from a study rather than just self-serving proclamations from journalists, they might believe old media is more relevant than has been portrayed.

Jarvis also criticizes the study for defining “news” as it has been traditionally defined — in terms of “articles”. However, as I pointed out in the comment section of his post, that’s just not true. The study, in fact, tracked not only articles, but also tweets and links to and from other sites — parts of the news ecosystem that Jarvis advocates. In his post, Buttry does make a good and fair point that the study should have included how news breaks on Twitter via the public, not just Twitter feeds from news organizations and “official” sources like the police department.

Story Selection

Another major criticism of the report is that its selection of stories focused on things like government, crime, health care — subjects that are inherently tilted toward traditional media. My main reaction to that is while that criticism may be true and valid, those are also some of the core subjects that the search for new journalism models is supposedly most concerned about, so why not focus on them? Yes, new media may own other niches like technology, entertainment, and sports, but I haven’t really heard anyone voice concerns about who’s going to cover those beats in a new media model, and since they are already well-covered by new media, why would we even need to worry about them?

And again, I question whether this would’ve been an issue had the findings turned out more in favor of new media. If the study picked six subjects that are new media’s bread-and-butter, would we see that point brought up, dwelled on, and hammered home? The ultimate issue here, I fear, may not be methodology, but rather ideology, and that’s the most disappointing thing about this for me.

Sick of It

In many of these new-media reactions, including the ones I cited above, the first and foremost thought seemed to be: “This is going to give old media new ammunition to use against us.” It was first among the concerns that Jarvis raised, and it was the opening to Buttry’s post. It just begs the question: Why, why, why? Why the heck does a study that reports so many findings about a news ecosystem immediately gets framed in the context of not just old vs. new media, but also as a weapon to be used against one side or the other and therefore must be immediately neutralized? Why must everything be turned into a microcosm of an old-vs.-new media conflict that we keep saying is over, a war we keep telling ourselves we aren’t going to fight anymore, an argument that we’ve supposedly moved beyond?

This underscores exactly why I’ve been becoming increasingly frustrated with the journalism discussion online. The debate has become so polarized that “insights” on any issue or new data have become pathetically predictable, and interactions between the two sides have frequently degenerated into little more than a repugnant game of gotchas, snarks, nitpicks, and mutual strawman accusations.

I sympathize with those in traditional media for the massive job losses, and from having worked with many of them, I know that they are actually much cooler people than the egomaniacs that some have tried to paint journalists to be. However, I am discouraged by the denial that some of them still cling to and the combination of individual and corporate intransigence that stymies attempts at change. Their industry is falling apart and yet some of them are still grasping at straws, such as that 95-percent figure from this study. Even if the study’s findings were undeniably correct, what good does it do to produce 95 percent of news when you are in danger of going out of business?

On the other side, I love the fountain of ideas bubbling up from the new-media camp, but am frequently turned off by the fact that the camp often exhibits simultaneously symptoms of a superiority complex and massive insecurities, creating the need to shout down any shred of evidence that might prove contrary to their beliefs. Time and again, it just feels like their focus is more about being (or appearing to be) right than about improving journalism, and that despite statements to the contrary, they relish the verbal sparring against old media a little too much. Did anyone tell these guys that they are already winning, that time and momentum are on their side? Lose that Mt. Everest-sized chip on your shoulders for crying out loud!! Honestly, if someone stumbled upon the surefire path to a successful new journalism model tomorrow and that path runs counter to what some of these guys have been pushing, I question whether they can bring themselves to embrace it.

Buttry opened his post about the study by saying that the reactions to the findings may tell us more about the state of the industry than the study does. Well, apparently the reactions have also held up a mirror to the face of the online discourse about journalism, and I for one am disgusted by what I see. This is part of the reason I’ve been blogging less about the subject lately. Staying away from the journosphere for most of Christmas break was such a pleasant break from the ceaseless cycles of kvetching, self-promotion, back-patting, ego-stroking, and hypocrisy. And that’s how a former journalist who’s still damn passionate about journalism comes to find it more enjoyable to read and write about Victorian costume dramas and fried chicken ads than journalism.