1 in 3 don't tune into trimmed news outlets

Roger Yu, USA TODAY | USATODAY

Nearly one in three consumers have stopped reading or watching a news outlet because it reduced coverage, according to a report released Monday by Pew Research Center.

Facing falling advertising revenue and increased competition from smaller, nimbler online news sites, traditional media organizations are slashing payrolls and turning to other cost-saving measures that weaken their news coverage, says Pew's 10th annual report on the health and status of American journalism.

On local television, news stories have shrunk in length and audiences were down across every key time slot in 2012, the report says. Coverage of government has been cut in half compared with 2005. Sports, weather and traffic account for 40% of the content.

Cable news stations' coverage of live events fell 30% from 2007 to 2012. Interview segments, which are cheaper to produce, were up 31%.

News magazines' influence also is waning, as Newsweek ended its print edition and Time cut about 5% of staff in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs.

And newspapers' reach is shrinking, too. Using estimates for newsroom cutbacks in 2012, the report says newspaper employment has fallen 30% since its peak in 2000 and is below 40,000 employees for the first time since 1978.

"There are all sorts of contributors in the evolving landscape of news and, in many ways, more opportunities for citizens to access information," says Amy Mitchell, acting director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "But there are more signs than ever that the reduced reporting power in the news industry is having an effect and may weaken both the industry's capacity to produce in-depth journalism and its credibility with the public."

The emergence of social media has emboldened politicians, companies and government agencies to bypass reporters and issue unfiltered statements directly to the audience. But with tightening deadlines and fewer resources from the newsroom, journalists also are increasingly passing along sources' assertions without further investigation, the report says.

After a review of videos from the 2012 presidential election race, the report concludes that "only 27% of statements in the media about the character and records of the presidential candidates originated with journalists, while roughly twice that many came from political partisans."

A dozen years earlier, half such statements came from journalists and a little more than one-third came from the campaigns, it says.

Pew's report noted the rise of sponsored ads or "native" ads that are designed to integrate seamlessly with news content. Sponsored advertising -- examples include promoted tweets, friends' commercial "likes" on Facebook News Feed and advertorials that run with other stories on news websites -- grew 39% to $1.56 billion in 2012, following a 56% increase in 2011.

Meanwhile, news companies are trailing big tech firms in one of the fastest growing areas of advertising -- mobile display. Six companies -- including Google, Facebook and other large ad networks that don't produce news content -- account for 72% of the mobile advertising market.

Other key findings:

-- Local TV stations are a top news source for Americans, but viewership fell in every key time slot last year. Local affiliates of the four major broadcast networks lost, on average, about 6% of viewers. The report questioned the strategy of steering more of the newsroom budget to sports, weather and traffic when such content is readily available online.

-- About a third of the 1,380 daily newspapers now charge or plan to charge readers for stories on their websites, somewhat offsetting the loss in advertising revenue. The New York Times' circulation revenue, including its website, exceeds its advertising sales. Small and midsize papers "are seeing success as well," the report says.

-- Cable stations are turning to cheaper ways of creating content, inviting pundits to fill airtime. CNN cut its prime-time story packages and live event coverage by about half between 2007 and 2012. Opinion filled 85% of MSNBC's newshole for the days studied. On Fox News, opinion accounted for 55% of its content.