Campaign settling into the top slot

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With the first serious tallies of the 2008 campaign looming large on the horizon, it’s going to take a major cataclysm to oust campaign coverage from the top slot on the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s news coverage chart, at least until the primary process reveals the top-ticket nominees for each party. The campaign easily dominated coverage during the week of 12/9/07-12/14/07. The report from former Sen. George Mitchell on steroid use in by professional baseball players, which netted a major alleged miscreant in the person of pitching star Roger Clemens, propelled sports to an unusually high spot on the chart (indeed, any spot on the chart). The shooting tragedy in Colorado replaced the earlier one in Omaha NE, and another weather story made the list. Overall, it was an unusually tight list, with only 16 items bearing witness to general agreement among the different media categories as to what the top stories were.


Story

Overall

Newspr

Online

NetTV

CATV

Radio

2008 campaign

26%

13%

20%

25%

40%

33%

Baseball/steroids

7%

6%

4%

8%

10%

6%

Domestic terrorism

7%

6%

5%

7%

8%

11%

Deep freeze in Plains

6%

x

10%

13%

2%

3%

Iraq events

4%

4%

11%

3%

x

1%

US economy

3%

6%

4%

2%

1%

3%

CO church shootings

3%

x

6%

5%

4%

1%

Global warming

3%

3%

7%

3%

x

1%

Immigration

2%

4%

x

x

4%

x

Algeria UN blast

2%

3%

3%

3%

x

x

Writers strike

x

4%

x

x

x

1%

Afghanistan

x

3%

x

x

x

x

Nobel Prizes

x

x

3%

x

x

x

Holiday season

x

x

x

2%

1%

3%

Iran

x

x

x

x

2%

x

Michael Vick

x

x

x

x

1%

x

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism