If I were a communications prof, I’d make this study – which is to say I wish someone would:
Take one day’s journalism in America and analyze critically what we have now so we know what we are replacing in a new media economy. How much of it (measured by resource that went into it) is:
* Investigation – the top of the pyramid.
* Original stories that bring information we would not have unless reporters went and asked questions.
* Event coverage.
* Stories that come from PR.
* Commodity news – rewrites and repetition.
News in a market will no longer be owned by one or a few outlets. News will be a much larger ecosystem to which many will contribute in many ways – an ecosystem that spreads outside the market. To understand what news will look like, we can’t analyze just one organization. We need to analyze the whole.