[was]<\/p>\n\n\n
While the local television news industry has avoided the kind of severe belt-tightening forced upon newspapers, there is some evidence of a narrowing local TV news agenda<\/a> now focused on three favorite topics. A Pew Research analysis of local TV news content<\/a> in 2005, compared with a snapshot sample in late 2012 and early 2013, found the airtime devoted to weather, traffic and sports had risen from 32% of the local newscast studied to 40% \u2014a 25% increase. Indeed, Pew Research\u2019s examination of 48 evening and morning newscasts in late 2012 and early 2013 found that 20 of them led with a weather report or story.<\/p>\n\n There are also data to suggest that deeper reporting may be less prominent on local television. According to a Pew Research study from 1998 through 2002, some 31% of all the stories on local television news excluding traffic, sports and weather were more than a minute long while 42% were under 30 seconds in length.\u00a0In 2012, the percentage of stories over a minute long shrank to 20% while the percentage of those that lasted less than half a minute grew to 50%. At the same time, the increasing consolidation of station ownership and the economic advantages of shared resources<\/a>\u00a0mean that nearly one-quarter of the almost 1,000 local television stations in the U.S. do not produce local news themselves, but rely on another station.<\/p>\n\n The primary focus of a majority of smaller digital native news outlets in this report is local, or even hyperlocal coverage\u2014often the most realistic and effective use of their limited resources.\u00a0 More than half of them that we analyzed\u2014231 outlets in all\u2014indicated a focus on local news, either through a narrower or more general topic menu. (That excludes organizations that primarily identified themselves as investigative.) In larger cities, some focused entirely on an individual neighborhood, such as the Leimert Park Beat<\/a> in Los Angeles and the Park Slope Stoop<\/a> in Brooklyn In addition, 28 digital news organizations said they concentrated on either state or state government issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n [such as]<\/p>\n\n\n One example of a digital nonprofit helping fill local reporting gaps is the relationship between Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia\u2014with a full-time staff of \u00a0three and an annual budget of around $400,000\u2014and the local paper, The Daily Progress. In the past few years, more than 1,100 Charlottesville Tomorrow stories have been published in The Progress, to the point where the digital outlet says \u201cit produces more than 50 percent of the newspaper’s content related to growth, development, and local politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Another area that has seen significant cutbacks in legacy coverage is international reporting, a trend some analysts trace back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago. Staff cutbacks at daily newspapers and broadcast television outlets have helped exacerbate that trend.<\/p>\n\n Andrew Tyndall, who tracks the evening newscasts at ABC, NBC and CBS, counted 1,671 minutes of total coverage with overseas datelines in 2013. That is less than half of what it was in the late 1980\u2019s and is part of a long downward trajectory of overseas coverage on national broadcast news that Tyndall charted.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n\n In 2010, the American Journalism Review conducted a <\/b>survey that found 234 international correspondents working at U.S. newspapers, down from 307 seven years earlier. That story also reported that 20 papers and newspaper companies had completely eliminated their foreign bureaus since 1998. \u00a0In 2008, a Pew Research \u00a0survey<\/a> of executives at more than 250 newspapers \u00a0found that nearly two-thirds\u201464% of them\u2014said international news was getting less space in the paper than it had three years earlier.<\/p>\n\n From 2007 through 2011, Pew Research examined and coded about 50,000 mainstream media news stories a year.\u00a0 In four of those five years, the percentage of the newshole devoted to overseas events<\/a> not directly connected to the U.S. ranged only between 10% and 11%. Only in 2011, a year marked by such international mega-stories as the Arab Spring and the Japanese tsunami, did the coverage spike \u2013 to 17%.<\/p>\n\n [including]<\/p>\n\n\n Relatively few digital organizations are focused exclusively on international coverage the way Global Post is, but a number of the more prominent digital organizations have recently been expanding and investing overseas at a brisk pace<\/p>\n\n Business Insider launched a site in Australia in 2013 and plans to open a newsroom in London this year. The two-year-old Quartz operation now has two reporters in London, one in Bangkok and two in Hong Kong.\u00a0 Its editorial staff speaks a combined 19 languages.<\/p>\n\n The Huffington Post, with 11 international editions, is launching soon in India and may expand to four other countries this year, according to Jimmy Soni.\u00a0 In early March, Vice Media\u2014which was already getting attention for its reporting on the Ukrainian crisis\u2014announced a new global news channel \u201cfor a youth audience\u201d backed by the reporting resources of 35 overseas bureaus.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n BuzzFeed made a major commitment to international news by bringing on a foreign editor in 2013. And in a memo to staffers, CEO Jonah Peretti said that following the company\u2019s expansion into London, Sydney, S\u00e3o Paulo and Paris, there would soon be new BuzzFeed offices in \u201cBerlin, Tokyo, Mumbai, Mexico City and many more.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n\n Investigative journalism tends to be expensive because of the time\u2014and staff power\u2014it often takes to unearth, report and vet an investigative expos\u00e9 before publishing (not to mention the potential cost of lawyers). And it too has felt the effect of legacy newsroom cuts, although there is data to indicate the loss of investigative jobs in mainstream media has been occurring for a while.<\/p>\n\n In 2005, a survey of the largest U.S. dailies conducted by Arizona State University journalism students found that 37% percent of those newspapers had no full-time investigative or projects reporters on their staffs. The report said that most had two or fewer, and only 10 newspapers had four or more investigative or projects reporters. Nearly two-thirds, 62% percent of the newspapers, did not have an editor tasked with working on investigations and 16% of the dailies reported disbanding \u00a0a projects or investigative team.<\/p>\n\n Several years ago, the American Journalism Review reported that membership in the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization had fallen from almost 5,400 in 2003, to about 4,000 in 2010.\u00a0 In explaining its mission on its website, the seven-year-old investigative nonprofit ProPublica states flatly:\u00a0 \u201cInvestigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n\n In this environment, a number of outlets in the digital news landscape are trying to take on the task of investigative journalism.\u00a0 \u201cI like to say this is the fastest growing sector in journalism,\u201d says Kevin Davis, CEO and executive director of the Investigative News Network. Formed in 2009, the organization\u2019s membership has grown to 92\u2014the large majority of which (73) are digital native outlets.<\/p>\n\n There are a number of modest-sized organizations that have moved into the investigative journalism realm. In our sample of smaller digital news outlets, nearly four dozen (45) identified themselves as investigative news outlets\u2014with many focused on the local or state level.\u00a0 They include such organizations as the Carolina Public Press<\/a> and New Mexico in Depth.<\/a><\/p>\n\n The New England Center for Investigative Reporting<\/a>, housed at Boston University, recently hired two Boston Globe reporters for its staff. The center sells its stories to legacy outlets, such as an expos\u00e9 of the deaths of young children under state protection that ran in The Globe and a look at the unregulated world of smartphone apps offering medical advice that was picked up by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n But much of the <\/b>investigative muscle in the digital news world comes from some of the larger nonprofit organizations\u2014such as ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity, which combined employ almost 130 editorial staffers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n In another sign of the role being played by these investigative outlets, some have been aggressively partnering to produce in-depth exposes with legacy news organizations. That is part of the operating model for ProPublica\u2014a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner\u2014which in 2012 published about 80 stories in conjunction with more than 25 media partners and has worked with such legacy outlets as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and PBS\u2019s Frontline.\u00a0 In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting teamed up with The Tampa Bay Times to publish an investigation of America\u2019s 50 worst charities.<\/p>\n\n![\"4](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2014\/03\/4-Local-News-Digital-Site.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\nInternational News<\/h3>\n\n
![\"BuzzFeed](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2014\/03\/BuzzFeed-International-Coverage.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\nInvestigative Journalism<\/h3>\n\n
![\"ProPublica](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2014\/03\/ProPublica-Investigative-Unit.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n