Our friends at J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism just released a report analyzing the media landscape in Philadelphia. The William Penn Foundation commissioned J-Lab to conduct the study of Philadelphia's media landscape and the state of public affairs reporting and make recommendations for a possible media investment strategy. It is well worth a read.
Some of the key findings:
- The available news about Philadelphia public affairs issues has dramatically diminished over the last three years by many measures: news hole, air time, story count, key word measurements.
- People in Philadelphia want more public affairs news than they are now able to get.
- They don't think their daily newspapers are as good as the newspapers used to be.
- They want news that is more connected to their city.
- People from both the Old Philadelphia, anchored by the city's union and blue-collar workers, and the New Philadelphia, representing tech-savvy, up-and-coming neighborhoods, want to be involved in helping to generate that news.
- The city is awash in media and technological assets that can pioneer a new Golden Era of Journalism.
- There is strong, but guarded, interest in exploring a collaborative journalism venture.
- A significant number of Philadelphia's new media outlets have expressed interest in pursuing a collaborative media initiative.
- Any collaborative news effort must validate and support the fiercely independent mindsets of the city's new media makers.
The entire report is available here.
