During the week of 8/5/07-8/10/07, the Project for Excellence in Journalism from a great deal of disagreement between the five media it tracks as to what should and should not be covered. In fact, only two overall top-10 stories were included on all five individual top 10 lists, and it was a rare week when the #2 story, the Utah mine accident, didn’t even make all five (newspapers didn’t include it). That incident was tailor-made for the 24/7 newshole on the cable channels, and they propelled it to number one with 28% coverage. The holdover disaster, the Minnesota bridge collapse, held onto 3rd place overall and along with #1 2008 campaign, was the only story to make all five lists. An interesting non-pattern developed beneath the overall top ten list, as different media chose to focus on different international hotspots. Two looked at Afghanistan, and only one each looked at Israel/Palestine, Pakistan and Iran. The biggest story to go away was Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Wall Street Journal.
