The Washington press corps has become increasingly fragmented in recent years, a consequence of the rise of niche publications that tend to offer smaller audiences highly specialized streams of information, according to a just-released study from the Pew Research Center.
The study, the center’s first examination of the D.C. press since 2009, analyzed the makeup of journalists accredited to sit in the U.S. Senate Press Gallery and revealed that reporters for niche outlets now outnumber their peers from daily newspapers. In the late 1990s, there were more than two daily newspaper reporters for every reporter from a niche publication.
“There are arguably more sources of news and journalism about what’s happening in Washington today than there have been before,” said Jesse Holcomb, associate director of research at Pew Research Center. “That means more options for audiences that are both elite audiences and the general public.”
The report shows that journalism in Washington. D.C. has expanded and contracted among different segments of the press corps. The number of reporters accredited in the Senate gallery working for digital-native publications has more than quadrupled since 2009, increasing from 31 journalists to 133. This growth has been accompanied by a decline in the amount of accredited reporters from daily newspapers, which have lost 32 reporters in the Senate gallery since 2009.
The bottom line: the BuzzFeeds and Mashables of the world are growing their capital footprint while regional newspapers like the Louisville Courier-Journal are shrinking theirs.
Many of the reporters who’ve left Washington, D.C. since 2009 come from ranks of regional newspapers, which have retreated from capital coverage in recent years. The Regional Reporters Association, an organization comprising reporters from non-Beltway outlets, has lost 14 members since 2008, according to the report. As of last year, 29 states had a D.C.-based reporter, down from 33 in 2009.
Of the newspapers that do have reporters based in D.C., many tend to publish coverage that focuses more on the machinations of Congress and less on how those decisions affect local readers, according to the report. Just a third of coverage from Washington, D.C.-based reporters studied over a 78-day congressional session was framed in terms of its impact on local voters. By contrast, 40 percent of coverage focused on how current events affect government and politicians. Citing multiple reporters interviewed for the report, Pew notes that many journalists acknowledged a predilection for insider-y D.C. stories that don’t tie directly back to the communities they cover. Those tendencies, combined with a smaller daily newspaper reporting corps and an increasing reliance on wire services, contribute to a “strained link from Washington to local communities,” according to Pew.
Pew’s findings about the rise of specialized publications dovetail with a recent account in The Atlantic that tracked the uptick in outlets that cater to the narrower interests of moneyed audiences. These publications, dubbed the “paywall press” by author John Heltman, cover politics and policy with “an alacrity that borders on obsession” for subscribers who can shell out thousands of dollars for scooplets of limited relevance to broader audiences. The result is a legion of reporters who might overlook important stories in pursuit of wonky minutiae.
Here’s the full report.
