Journalism

For the second week in a row, the actions of President Obama fueled substantial coverage of the state of the U.S. economy. Toyota’s mounting problems and a controversial kidnapping case in Haiti also helped propel those subjects onto the roster of top stories.

Anticipation and reaction to Apple’s new iPad was the hottest topic on Twitter last week. Blogs, though, were more caught up with a British program made up entirely of footage shot by chimpanzees. In both arenas, the President’s State of the Union Address drew little reflection.

The recovery efforts following the tragic earthquake in Haiti continued to be the main subject of interest in parts of social media last week—particularly on Twitter and YouTube. Blogs also discussed details of the quake’s aftermath, but the blogosphere paid more attention to other topics, including warnings from European countries about security risks involved with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

The media’s attention was divided between Port au Prince and Massachusetts last week, and the two stories highlighted significant differences in editorial priorities, particularly in the cable news universe. Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s one-year anniversary as President triggered a wave of evaluations that tended toward the bearish.

Social media responded strongly to the tragic earthquake that shattered Haiti last week. Beyond conveying information and first-hand accounts, Twitter became central in the effort to raise funds through text-messaging to help relief organizations. On YouTube, surveillance videos gained widespread attention.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism did not issue a News Index report this week, but the data is available.

A story about a British sex study was the No. 1 news topic in the blogosphere last week while news of an elitist dating site led on Twitter. On YouTube, a Brazilian news anchor got himself into trouble for making insulting comments he thought were private.

With the White House producing a post-mortem on what went wrong, the Christmas bombing plot led the news agenda last week. And it was joined by a number of related terrorism topics in the news, harkening back to the days of nervous post 9/11 headlines.