No big story? Hit the election some more

The previous week’s big story, the California wildfires, was still smoldering enough to capture third place of total media news coverage, but it was with a mere 4% as lack of a truly major event tended to diversify and dilute editorial story options. For the most part, the media fell back on the 20080 presidential campaign, led by radio and cable TV, which gave the story 28% and 27% of coverage time and propelled it to the top of the chart as the only double-digit tale, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism coverage chart for the week of 10/28/07-11/2/07. It was a slow week for the Middle East — usually you can add up several segments of coverage focused on the region and easily climb into double-digits, but this week three categories combined for only 8. The previous week featured diverse coverage as well, but that was in large part due to the voracious consumption of the California fire story, which ate media time and space along with chunks of the unfortunate state. Thus the biggest story to entirely disappear from the coverage chart, health care, had only had a 2% share to dissipate.

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism