New Pew Study Backs Up PRBackTalk's Position on Newspapers & Format Changes

Another interesting article about the sorry state of newspapers by the New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena, "As Papers Struggle, News Is Cut and the Focus Turns Local."

Findings of a new Pew Research Center survey include:

• 64% of newspapers have reduced foreign coverage.
• 10% of editors think foreign news is "very essential."
• 57% of papers reported a decline in the amount of space allocated to national news.
• One-third of papers are allocating less space for business news.
  
• Three/fifths of papers have less space for news overall.
• Large papers are reducing space given to business, arts, features and opinions -- topics that smaller papers generally don't give much space to in the first place.
• 85% of large papers have seen a decline in the size of their news staffs. Overall, there's been a 59% decline, which means smaller papers have been a bit more resilient.

Makes it a very difficult time for journalists and PR executives.

Also check out an interesting article in the July Conde Nast Portfolio, "The Romenesko Empire: How the first media gossip site inadvertently ushered in the era of fact-free journalism" by former top NY Times editor Howell Raines. Apparently, Romenesko is being supplanted by Gawker the same way traditional print media is being supplanted by blogs.