Project for Excellence in Journalism

The Year in the News 2011

Coverage of Economy and International News Jump in a Year of Major Breaking Stories

December 21, 2011

In a very heavy news year, coverage of the weakening economy jumped substantially from 2010 and emerged as the No. 1 story in the news media, according to The Year in News, a look back by the The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report is based on analysis of 52 different traditional news outlets from the main five media sectors -- newspapers, online news sites, television broadcasts, radio programming and social media. The project analyzed close to 46,000 stories.

On Twitter, in contrast to other news outlets, technology companies were the subjects that showed up as the most discussed stories.

These are two of the results users can find in the report or explore for themselves using the Year in the News Interactive 2011 tool.

With the Interactive tool, users can also explore:

• The most and least covered stories
• Coverage of foreign news
• Breaking news events that dominated coverage
• The topics that got the most coverage
• The top newsmakers of the year
• Differences in focus among the cable news networks

See also: The Stories the Public Followed the Most in 2011