You can lead a talker to news, but you can't make him talk about it, would seem to be the lesson from the Project for Excellence in Journalism Talker Index for the week of 6/17-22/07. IN point of fact, the news coverage for the week was scattered, with the 2008 campaign taking top honors with a modest 11%. Talkers agreed that it was the #1 topic, but gave it a full quarter of their attention at 25%.
They then moved on to immigration (12%), which was received a very modest #5/4% in the newshole. Talkers devalued #2 news story events in Iraq from 9% down to 3%, a focused on five stories which were not on the top 10 news list, including White House scandals, fired US attorneys, talk show wars, Iraq policy an the Duke lacrosse scandal. It marks a departure from the usual pattern of reacting to and amplifying the major news stories of the week.
