currents

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry
January 13, 2012

105 number of countries with freedom of information laws; The Associated Press sent each a request on terrorism arrests and convictions

49 percentage of those countries that responded with at least some relevant information; 73 percent of those responses came in after the countries’ legal deadline

18 percentage of countries that either promised to respond and didn’t, answered with irrelevant information, or rejected the request

33 percentage of countries that never acknowledged the requests

3.3 million viewers of CNBC’s November 9 Republican debate that featured Rick Perry’s “oops” gaffe

2 million number of viewers for the top ten hits of a YouTube search for “Rick Perry oops”

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118 percentage increase in FOX News’s Twitter followers between February and October 2011

30 percentage increase in The New York Times’s Twitter followers during the same period

19.8 million size of the network evening news audience for the second quarter of 2010

21.8 million audience size for the second quarter of 2011, a ten percent increase and the largest jump in a decade

28.9 million network news audience lost between 1980 and 2010

Sources: The AP, Nielsen, Project for Excellence in Journalism, YouTube

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.