Economy Reemerges as Top Story

Driven by coverage of both a presidential housing relief plan and the Occupy Wall Street protests, the economy accounted for 25% of the newshole last week, marking its highest level of coverage in almost two months.

From October 24-30, the economy filled 25% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is the most media attention to the subject since the week of September 5-11, (28%) when President Obama’s job speech helped fuel much of the coverage. Last week, Obama’s plan to make it easier to refinance mortgages and the Occupy Wall Street story combined to account for almost 40% of all the economic coverage. At 5% of the overall newshole, however, Occupy Wall Street fell far below its biggest week of coverage (October 10-16), when it filled 10% of the overall newshole. That was the case despite a spike in drama in a number of cities last week as police clashed with protestors, with one encounter that resulting in a critical injury of an Iraq war veteran in Oakland (CA).