Paper Topic Ideas

What's new about news?

I went a little meta -- this blog is called Paper Topics from the News, and I wondered -- what is news now?  Most people don’t read a daily newspaper (at least not in print), and sometimes it’s not clear whether what we’re hearing or watching, or reading is news, opinion, or entertainment -- so I’m wondering, what is news?  Where do people get their news?  How can I find different points of view on the news? 

Pew Research surveys people to find out about news habits and lots of other social issues.  They published a factsheet on where people from different demographics get news.  They started with where people reported getting at least some news, and compared results in 2022 to results from 2021 and 2020:  There’s a lot of change in three years!

So, why is this interesting?  We can see change that’s happening fast right now - but is it really that different from earlier years?  And why do some people still buy print newspapers?

According to the Census Bureau “Total  estimated weekday circulation of U.S. daily newspapers was 55.8 million in 2000 and dropped to 24.2 million by 2020” -- that’s less than half as many newspapers sold.  And the graph from Pew Research above shows that those numbers are still falling.

How does the shift from newspapers, magazines, and broadcast television and radio to digital devices affect people who are interested in news?  One big change is that instead of a few large news providers offering the same information to most people, there are many smaller news outlets to choose from.  Because of that when people talk about a news story, they may have heard very different reports and opinions -- there’s not always agreement about the details of important news stories.  

Who reports the news, and who decides what we see and hear?  

• If you want to know more about how news reporting works, there are some excellent journalism resources available -- Nieman Lab runs a journalism fellowship at Harvard, and an excellent newsletter about what’s happening in journalism now.  The Poynter Institute teaches journalism and also runs several fact-checking projects; they post articles about how journalism works.  ProPublica is a nonprofit that specializes in investigative journalism; their Illinois branch has a terrific Journalism Q & A page.  The Pew Research Foundation surveys Americans to find out about lots of social issues; they have a great collection of research about News Habits & Media
• Want to look at a variety of news articles?  PCC Library offers several news databases -- from a free subscription for students to the New York Times Online, to US Major Dailies (5 of the biggest newspapers) , Newspaper Source (mostly smaller US cities), Alt-PressWatch (for alternative newspapers, like Willamette Week) and Ethnic NewsWatch (newspapers for specific ethnic communities).  Locally, you might also look at Street Roots, the weekly street newspaper.  
• Looking for stories from different places?  Rest Of World offers stories that “connect the dots across a rapidly evolving digital world, through on-the-ground reporting in places typically overlooked and underestimated.”  Some of the most interesting stories I’ve seen about AI, TikTok, and social media have been on Rest of World.