1. A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. That audience decline, in turn, is putting pressures on revenues and profits.
2. Much of the new investment in journalism today is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom. While there are exceptions, in general journalists face real pressures trying to maintain quality.
3. In the 24-hour cable and online news format, there is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, repetitive and partial quality in some reports, without much synthesis or even the ordering of the information.
4. Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are varying their news agenda, their rules on separating advertising from news and even their ethical standards.