currents

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry
February 23, 2011

14 percent of coverage given to former press secretary Scott McClellan and his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, the week of its 2007 release.

1.4 percent of coverage given to George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, the week of its 2010 release. The book contained no mention of McClellan.

£34 million (about $55 million) will be cut from BBC Online’s budget of £137 in response to a freeze in license fees by the Cameron government

200 BBC websites—and 360 jobs—are set to be eliminated in the next two years under the plan

70 percent drop in newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS in developed countries over the past two decades

100,000+ copies of Wired’s first iPad issue (June 2010) were purchased at $4.99 each

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32,000 copies of Wired’s September iPad issue were purchased at $3.99 each, leaving many talking of a “slide” in magazine sales for the device

37 percent of Wired’s September newsstand sales were for the iPad, even with the decline

135 instances in which The New York Times has misspelled JFK advisor Theodore Sorensen’s name

66 instances in which The New York Times has spelled Jackson Pollock as “Jackson Pollack”

Sources: Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, C-SPAN, BBC, The Trends in Sustainability Project, Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy Blog, Advertising Age, Regret The Error.

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.