Two stories hogged the attention of Americans in 2007 with “reverse trajectories,” at first the war in Iraq, which declined in interest as the ’08 Presidential elections took over the spotlight.
That’s a main conclusion of the State of the News Media 2008 report, just released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which also cites “markedly short attention span” stories such as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the California wildfires, one-week wonders that drew intense coverage and suddenly faded from sight.
Subjects least covered last year included urban sprawl, the legal and court system, religion, transportation, education, and race, gender and sexual identity issues, none of which attracted more than 1% of coverage over all.