The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism today published its annual report on the State of the News Media labelling 2009 as the "bleakest" it has seen since the group began doing annual studies six years ago, AFP reported. The report describes U.S. newspapers as "perilously close to free fall" and in desperate need of an economically viable business model to survive in a digital world.

The report offers insight into the business lives of newspapers, online media, network, cable and local television news as well as news magazines, radio and the ethnic press.

Weekly news magazines and daily newspapers are in the most trouble, according to the report. "The newspaper industry exited a harrowing 2008 and entered 2009 in something perilously close to free fall," stated the report's authors, according to AFP. "But the deep recession already threatens the weakest papers. Nearly all are now cutting so deeply and rapidly that simply coping with the economic downturn has become a major distraction from efforts to reinvent the economics of the business."

While not subscribing to the recurring cries of the industry's death, this need for reinvention was the report's major critique of the industry. "If the industry is not dying, the more pertinent question may be can newspapers beat the clock?" they asked. "Can they find a way to convert their growing audience online into sufficient revenue to sustain the industry before their shrinking revenues from print fall too far?"

The report saw two key factors in 2008 that induced the newspaper industry's suffering and accelerated the need for a novel business model to produce profitability: First, the massive consumer migration to online news sources combined with an online advertising plateau and a print advertising decline. The second was the focus on survival amid the global recession instead of industry revenue restructuring.

The report also exposed revealing statistics on the newspaper industry:

• Revenues dropped 14 percent in 2008, and 23 percent in two years.
• Publicly traded newspaper company stock fell 83 percent in 2008.
• Ten percent of the newspaper industry's newsroom jobs were lost in 2008, and even more than 10 percent were lost at larger papers.
• By the end of 2009, 25 percent of "all the newsroom jobs that existed in 2001 will be gone."

Weekly news magazines are also in economic trouble according to the report. Citing a recent survey, the report found less than a quarter of American adults read a magazine of some kind the day before. This figure was a third in 1994.

The report found local and network television news also struggling. "In local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates," the report stated, according to AFP. "In network news, even the rare programs increasing their ratings are seeing revenues fall."

Cable television news provided the only light in a dark media tunnel.

"With an almost singular focus on politics, cable saw overall average ratings through the day and evening rise 38 percent in 2008, and profits rose 33 percent," the report stated.