PEJ Study Shows Top News Stories Vary Depending on Medium

New Media Index shows Sotomayor as traditional media's top story, Palin in blogosphere

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/23/2009 4:22:48 PM

Turns out the top news story of the week increasingly depends on which medium is carrying the message.

According to the latest Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) weekly New Media Index, the top story in the traditional media the week of July 13-17 was the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor; the top story in the blogosphere was Sarah Palin's political future; while on Twitter, Iran led the conversation (for the fifth week in a row).

In fact, PEJ found that of the top 10 news stories in traditional media like cable news channels, network broadcasts and newspapers, only one, healthcare, was also in the top 10 on Twitter and in blogs.

The third most popular story on the blogs had originally been carried on traditional media, but "received little attention." As it turns out, some of that attention may have been misplaced. The story was about biomass-eating Pentagon robots, but most of the blogging on the story was related to some initial reports that the robots would be feeding on human and animal remains, which were later corrected.

The most-linked-to stories on Twitter for the week, according to PEJ, were about the continuing protests in Iran.

The most-watched videos on YouTube for the week were also news-related. Getting over 700,000 views combined were two videos of an ABC Good Morning America segment offering an alternate, video, view of a still photo that seemed to indicate the president scoping out a woman's backside during the G8 summit.