GradetheNews.org
Grade the News is a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are affiliated with Stanford University’s Graduate Program in Journalism.
We aim to provide timely critiques and in-depth, systematic analyses that allow the public to compare newspapers and local television news broadcasts on equal footing. Think of us as a kind of Consumer Reports for news.
Our signature service is a periodic survey of thousands of local print and broadcast stories. For each story, we determine the newsworthiness, number and expertise of sources, thematic approach, number of people affected, fairness and other traits. The end product is a letter grade for the newsroom -- anywhere from A to F.
Currently, we grade the most popular local news media -- three newspapers and five television news broadcasts. These are: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, KTVU Channel 2, KRON Channel 4, KPIX Channel 5, KGO Channel 7 and KNTV Channel 11.
We also monitor and occasionally write about a variety of other Bay Area print and broadcast outlets that provide daily news.
Our mission is to:
Help Bay Area residents recognize their dependence on news -- democracy’s most essential commodity, assess news organizations’ success in meeting those ends, and secure quality news across the region’s diverse communities.
The problem -- market-driven journalism
In the past two decades, business values -- essentially market values -- have become more prominent in newsrooms, which have increasingly become owned by large corporations.
Subtly but surely, market values are redefining news. Journalism’s ideal of maximizing public understanding of important current events and issues is eroding, in favor of the commercial goal of maximizing return to owners.
This economic rationalization has gone further in some news organizations than in others. It is most evident in the medium more Americans turn to for news than any other -- local television. But is spreading among newspapers as well.
As a result, society is steadily losing access to the information necessary for self-government.
One solution -- change marketplace demand
If one of the markets shaping the news is for readers and viewers, the public has a chance to influence the quality of the news it receives. If newspapers and TV stations in the Bay Area were to gain or lose audience because local residents could readily distinguish quality and insist on it, there would be a financial incentive to upgrade the news.
Our job is to acquaint Bay Area citizens with what they should be able to expect from the news and alert them to differences in quality that may be difficult to evaluate if they don't have the time to really study the news.
We have no political ax to grind, although we do have a bias -- that the primary purpose of journalism is to maximize public understanding of current issues and events, not maximize return to owners.
We aim to provide timely critiques and in-depth, systematic analyses that allow the public to compare newspapers and local television news broadcasts on equal footing. Think of us as a kind of Consumer Reports for news.
Our signature service is a periodic survey of thousands of local print and broadcast stories. For each story, we determine the newsworthiness, number and expertise of sources, thematic approach, number of people affected, fairness and other traits. The end product is a letter grade for the newsroom -- anywhere from A to F.
Currently, we grade the most popular local news media -- three newspapers and five television news broadcasts. These are: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, KTVU Channel 2, KRON Channel 4, KPIX Channel 5, KGO Channel 7 and KNTV Channel 11.
We also monitor and occasionally write about a variety of other Bay Area print and broadcast outlets that provide daily news.
Our mission is to:
Help Bay Area residents recognize their dependence on news -- democracy’s most essential commodity, assess news organizations’ success in meeting those ends, and secure quality news across the region’s diverse communities.
The problem -- market-driven journalism
In the past two decades, business values -- essentially market values -- have become more prominent in newsrooms, which have increasingly become owned by large corporations.
Subtly but surely, market values are redefining news. Journalism’s ideal of maximizing public understanding of important current events and issues is eroding, in favor of the commercial goal of maximizing return to owners.
This economic rationalization has gone further in some news organizations than in others. It is most evident in the medium more Americans turn to for news than any other -- local television. But is spreading among newspapers as well.
As a result, society is steadily losing access to the information necessary for self-government.
One solution -- change marketplace demand
If one of the markets shaping the news is for readers and viewers, the public has a chance to influence the quality of the news it receives. If newspapers and TV stations in the Bay Area were to gain or lose audience because local residents could readily distinguish quality and insist on it, there would be a financial incentive to upgrade the news.
Our job is to acquaint Bay Area citizens with what they should be able to expect from the news and alert them to differences in quality that may be difficult to evaluate if they don't have the time to really study the news.
We have no political ax to grind, although we do have a bias -- that the primary purpose of journalism is to maximize public understanding of current issues and events, not maximize return to owners.
posted by Alice at
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
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