• Editor & Publisher, Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11 AM

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual report on the state of mass media, released this week, contained a number of surprises.  Among them:  1. "Any idea that newspapers have turned a corner and are on a rapid course to extinction seems overheated. The circulation declines and job cuts will probably tally at only about 3 percent for the year. The industry will still post profit margins of 20 percent. And if one combines print and online, the readership of many newspapers is higher than ever.”  2. More people gave high marks to their local papers than to the country's large, national papers. For nationally influential newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, just 38 percent of the public gives a favorable rating--nearly half that of the local newspapers. "Most analysts explain the gap as one of proximity and connectedness. The closer the staff is to the lives of the readers, the more the readers tend to trust them," says the report.  3. Also, in a surprising finding, the report states that the audience for online news appears to have leveled off. The growth now is not in how many people get news online, “but how often they do so.”

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