Do newspapers really generate 85 percent of fact-based news?
Sunday’s New York Times Book Review carried Sir Harold Evans‘ review of Alex S. Jones’ book Losing the News. The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy.
The review states:
The most valuable element in journalism is often enough not an episode that occurred today, yesterday or, horrors, the day before. It’s the creation of a new awareness provided by either months of investigation or relentlessly regular coverage.
And later:
Jones’s defense of the newspaper is not simply nostalgic. Many people may think they get their news from television and the Web, but even today, he estimates, 85 percent of fact-based news currently originates in a newspaper attempting to record, explain and investigate. Television — network, local, cable — he dismisses as derivative media, doing less and less original reporting (though most people would say the televised debates were the most revealing element in the presidential election). As for talking heads, newspaper columnists, radio commentators, feature and op-ed writers, political bloggers and joke-meisters, “their point of departure is almost always information gleaned from . . . reporting.” I bet Jay Leno is unaware how much he was dependent on an iron ball: it’s enchanting to learn that during Leno’s first 10 years on “The Tonight Show” he relied on the press’s accuracy for more than 18,000 political jokes, “almost 4,000 of them about Bill Clinton.”
There’s no explanation for Jones’ estimate “that 85 percent of fact-based news currently originates in a newspaper attempting to record, explain and investigate.”
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
Dear General Public,
Please remember that if you answer “Sorry, newspapers, you aren’t that important” that you are on a newspaper website, presumably to get news.
Your Humble Servant,
JPinSTL
I would say `yes.’ Outside of immediate breaking news, television and radio stations have tended to chase news stories developed by print journalists.
There is a reason the word “journalist” includes the word “journal.”
TV breaks more visual, one dimensional police scanner stories, but papers and the AP wire break more in depth, complex, and sometimes initially obscure ones. Some stories lend themselves to immediate visuals (a big fire) but others are just talking head stories.
The advantage of the web is that it is multimedia — print, audio and visual. People haven’t really learned how to use it appropriately yet, which is why we have verbose webpages, talking head YouTube videos of nothing, and static radio sites.
Any medium can be used indepth or news bulletin fashion. What needs to be taught more is how to find, research and verify stories in any medium.
I would agree that newspapers have the most fact based news. They start with some facts, then alter their stories to fit their agenda. If you want to go to the source of the most factual news, go to Fox News.
Susan — the perfect lesson for J school students today should be for them to approach the natural born citizen requirement and investigate a Presidential candidate objectively to learn the truth. The PD failed that lesson miserably.
What do I think?
85% of statistics are made up on the spot.