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    Network News: A Year of Change and Challenge at NBC

    After an unusual uptick in the overall audience for evening news in 2011, the trend line returned to its normal in 2012. The combined viewership for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts dropped 2%, to 22.1 million, resuming the downward trajectory of nearly three decades. It now appears that 2011 may have been an outlier, with the bigger audience attributable to an unusual number of major news events that year, including the Arab Spring, the Japanese earthquake and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Even a presidential election couldn’t keep some viewers from deserting network news in 2012.

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    Local TV: Audience Declines as Revenue Bounces Back

    The long slow decline in viewership of local television news resumed in 2012 after a brief respite the previous year. While stations devoted more of their available air time to local news, that wasn’t sufficient to halt the decline in viewership. Early-morning newscasts continued to gain viewers, but that increase was more than offset by losses in most other time slots.

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    The Changing TV News Landscape

    The news programs that Americans watch on national cable channels and their local television stations have changed significantly in recent years while the network evening newscasts have remained remarkably stable, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

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    The Media and Campaign 2012

    One of the key findings in the new State of the News Media report is that at a time of diminishing reporting resources, many newsmakers, in political, public and corporate life, are finding new ways to get their messages to the public—often with little or no journalistic vetting.

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    Timeline: Top News Stories of 2012

    Here’s a look at the public’s top 15 news stories of 2012, according to Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index.

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    Election, Tragedies Dominate Top Stories of 2012

    The public’s news interests were very much focused on domestic developments this year, with the election outcome, last week’s horrific school shooting and Hurricane Sandy leading the list of the top stories of 2012. With the exception of the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya in September, which became a bitterly debated campaign issue, […]

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    In Social Media and Opinion Pages, Newtown Sparks Calls for Gun Reform

    Gun control was an immediate focus of the conversation on social media and in the opinion pages of newspapers following the shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a special PEJ report. How does the response to this tragedy compare with other shootings? How did coverage in opinion pieces differ than the social media conversation? The report offers answers.

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    Public Divided over What Newtown Signifies

    Overview The shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. on Friday have drawn widespread public interest. A weekend survey finds that 57% of Americans say they followed news about the tragedy there very closely. That is higher than interest in the shootings at an Aurora, Colo. movie theater in July (49% very closely), though […]

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    The Media, Religion and the 2012 Campaign for President

    Religion played a minor role in coverage of the 2012 campaign, even though the race pitted the first major Mormon nominee against an incumbent whose faith has been a source of controversy. A new report from PEJ and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life examines role of faith in 15 months of campaign coverage.

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    More Following ’Fiscal Cliff’ Debate than Petraeus Investigation

    Overview In a busy news week, more Americans say they followed the debate over the “fiscal cliff” very closely than the investigations into the Libya embassy attack, renewed violence in the Middle East or the FBI investigation that led to David Petraeus’s resignation as CIA Director after it found he was having an extra-marital affair. […]