PEJ report compares user-news sites with professional ones
The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a new report today comparing the news selection on user-ranked sites like Digg, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Yahoo News (Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed) with the news agenda of 48 mainstream news outlets.
"In short, the user-news agenda, at least in this one-week snapshot, was more diverse, yet
also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media. This does
not mean necessarily that users disapprove or reject the mainstream news agenda. These
user sites may be supplemental for audiences. They may gravitate to them in addition to,
rather than instead of, traditional venues. But the agenda they set is nonetheless quite
different."
Some key findings include:
• The news agenda of the three user-sites that week was markedly different from
that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected did not appear
anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied. And
there was often little in the way of follow-up. Most stories on the user-news sites
appeared only once, never to be repeated again in the week we studied.
• The sources user news sites draw on are strikingly different from the mainstream
media. Seven in ten stories (70%) on the user sites come either from blogs or Web
sites such as YouTube and WebMd that do not focus mostly on news.
• The three user news sites differed from one another in subtle ways. Reddit was
the most likely to focus on political events from Washington, such as coverage of
Vice President Cheney; Digg was particularly focused on the release of Apple’s
new iPhone; Del.icio.us had the most fragmented mix of stories and the least
overlap with the News Index.
• On Yahoo News--even when picking from a limited list of stories Yahoo editors
had already pared down—users’ top stories only rarely matched those of the news
professionals.
• There were mostly similarities in what people are most likely to email each other
versus what they recommend or view on Yahoo News. But there were some
differences. Most Recommended stories focused more on “news you can use”
such as advice from the World Health Organization to exercise one’s legs during
long flights; the Most Viewed stories were often breaking news, more sensational
in nature, with a heavy dose of crime and celebrity; and the Most Emailed stories
were more diverse, with a mix of the practical and the oddball.
• Despite claims that the Web would internationalize consumers’ news diets,
coverage across the three user-news sites focused more on domestic events and
less on news from abroad than the mainstream media that week. Yahoo News,
both on its main news page and three most popular pages, meanwhile, stood out
for being decidedly more international that week.
Sep 12, 2007 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT
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