Thanks for the link from Scott Heiferman, who got it from ZeFrank, and thanks most of all to the editor, filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source – 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.

These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38% of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information. Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. The survey results were announced at this week’s fourth-annual We Media Forum and Festival in Miami, hosted by the University of Miami School of Communication and organized and produced by iFOCOS, a Reston, Va.-based media think tank (www.ifocos.org). This is the second year of the survey.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges – or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present.

“Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news – so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services – and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge – and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Further Details: Zogby Methodological statement

You’re familiar with Dirty South rap, right?

You’re not? That just shows how white-bread you are. Not that there’s anything wrong with being white-bread; I’m white, 54 years old, and a classical music buff myself, which is as white-bread as you can get. But I’m also fascinated by the many cultures that surround me, especially those that don’t get a lot of outside attention, and it seems that Bradenton is a hotbed of Dirty South rap creativity.

I need to get out to one of the local public golf clubs, vidcam in hand, and talk to some of the golfing community, too. Golf is very big in this part of Florida, but many public courses are being plowed under to make room for overpriced tract housing. The golf culture here — at least its working-class segment — is under siege and may not last long if development continues at its current rate. I hear that due to the increasing shortage of public golf facilities, greens fees have climbed to the point where many senior citzens on fixed incomes can no longer afford to play.

Several years ago I wrote about Florida trailer park culture on my personal site. That article has drawn well over 50,000 pageviews (and had dozens of comments attached to it before I made some site changes in mid-2006 and lost all of them). I think that article has proven so popular because there is little news coverage that mentions trailer parks here unless a crime is committed in a low-end one. Despite the fact that close to 30% of all Manatee County residents live in mobile homes, you almost never see one featured in local papers’ real estate sections, and there is no coverage of the many volunteer activities organized by trailer park resident councils.

Each trailer park is a community. Most have newsletters for residents, but that’s about all the press those communities get. Shouldn’t there be at least one video feature about Bingo night at the Casa Loma mobile home park? This is a major recreation hot spot for retirees — and not just for retirees who live in trailer parks, either.

(Note for non-Floridians: Trailers do *not* all blow away in hurricanes. Most of them survive just fine. But TV cameras never focus on the ones that aren’t damaged. There’s no drama in post-hurricane shots of intact mobile homes.)

Communities all around us

I have given up on the idea of “the community.” A “community” like Bradenton is full of subcommunities and subcultures. You can’t even talk about the “black community” as a single entity. There are black churchgoing groups, black motorcycle groups (and white ones), black gangsters and wannabes, and black entrepreneurs who are more likely to be found at Chamber of Commerce meetings than at black power gatherings.

We have religious communities all over the place around here, ranging from evolution-denying, hands-in-the-air, ultra-Christian congregations to Unitarian/Univeralists and Bahá’ís who believe all humans tread the same spiritual path regardless of their specific beliefs. We have a sprinkling of Jews and Muslims. Again, not a single “religious community” but lots and lots of communities, each centered on one faith or another.

It is possible to be a member of more than one community. I’m sure that somewhere, not far from me, there is a woman who belongs to a conservative Christian church and a motorcycle club, and also loves roller derby. For all I know, she is also into tattoos, and is a member of one of the cliques (communities?) that seems to surround each local tattoo studio. And she might be part of a local Republican women’s group, which is yet another type of community.

Maybe in some parts of America, Bowling Alone is the norm, but around here it’s hard to stay completely disconnected from “the community” unless you work darned hard at it. Even my wife, Debbie, who is as shy and unsocial a person as you’re ever likely to meet, has gotten sucked into the local Village of the Arts community.

Debbie is also close to getting dragged into the local roller derby community, which was founded by a woman who was already a well-known member of the arts community hereabouts.

Indeed, Sunday’s roller derby meet was well-attended by Village of the Arts people, many of whom held signs for “our” team, the Mensa Misfits, and screamed just as loud as the biker-type crowd cheering on the Cutthroat Cuties (who won in the end).

After the roller derby, we went to the nearest bar, roller derby partisanship forgotten, where we all redivided into another pair of communities: Bears fans and Patriots fans, as we watched the last third of the NFC championship (football) game.

When the football game ended, and the long-faced Patriots fans had been consoled, the “citizens video journalism community” (that’s Wheat, Chris, and me) piled into my old Jeep and headed out, worn out, talking excitedly about our editing plans for the roller derby tape we’d just shot, along with plans for the next community event we’re scheduled to tape, and about what other communities and events we ought to cover. What about the community radio community? We’d love to do videos about our two local community radio stations. And one about the local blogging community that gets together (in the virtual sense) at TampaBlab.com. And so on. We came up with idea after idea, non-stop, on our way home.

So many communities, so little time!