Faced with economic challenges, mainstream news media are increasingly turning to niche areas of coverage in order to build audience, according to “The State of the American News Media, 2007,” a report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is a project of the Pew Research Center (PEJ). “In a sense, every outlet is becoming more of a niche player with reduced ambitions,” said PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel. Niches are defined as “franchise” coverage areas, specialties and even crusades.

The study, now in its 4th year, offers nine detailed chapters on different sectors of the press – newspapers, magazines, network TV, cable TV, local TV, the Internet (including blogs), radio, the ethnic press, and alternative media. Of these nine news media, the PEJ found only one that is still growing after four years – the ethnic press.

Specific findings include:

• Cable News – after growing for a decade, its audience is now declining as cable’s “argument culture” gives way to an “answer culture” where news media offer solutions, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.

• Internet News –no clear models of how to do journalism online exist yet…Features such as immediacy and customizability have been developed much more than others, such as depth or the use of multimedia.”

• Blogging – it’s on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for a few, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics.

The report warns that the overall media trend toward “franchise building” and “hyperlocalism” could be code words for simple cost-cutting, and, if pursued mindlessly, spell the death of a big city metro paper. A better economic model, the PEJ suggests, would be for news providers, instead of charging consumers for their content, charge licensing fees to Internet providers and aggregators.

The PEJ also cites a growing question of whether the dominant news media ownership model of the recent past, the public corporation, is “suited to the transition newsrooms must now make.” Yet, the report concludes that the old newsrooms of America are most likely to be the successful newsrooms of the future. The key is likely to depend heavily on the quality of leadership, both in the newsroom and boardroom.