The U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism released its 2008 State of the News Media report on Monday.

Here's the link to the online section.

Here's an excerpt from a posting by Online Journalism Review's Robert Niles (I'm bagged tonight, so sorry, no thinking):

Two graphs in PEJ's summary of its report struck me: "In many ways the audience for news—and for what traditional newsrooms produce—appears to be growing. Nor are journalists failing to adapt. There are more signs in 2008 than ever that news people embrace the new technology and want to innovate.

"The problem, it is increasingly clear, is a broken economic model—the decoupling of advertising and news. Advertisers are not migrating to news websites with audiences, and online, news sites are already falling financially behind other kinds of Web destinations."

The PEJ report is not based upon a single survey or study; rather, it provides a handy summary of other research, surveys and commentary about the news industry over the past year. It includes a Pew Research Center/PEJ survey of 500 journalists, conducted last fall, as well as overviews of research conducted about newspapers, network, cable and local television, magazines, radio, ethnic media... as well as online.

While the PEJ has expanded the report's focus to include many so-called "hyperlocal" news websites, the bulk of the information in the online section of the report derives from studies of websites from major established offline news companies, as well as from large online portals and search engines such as Yahoo!, AOL and Google. Unfortunately, that leaves unexamined a wide swath of online information sources, from discussion forums to topical blog communities, where many readers are finding timely and relevant information.