Sotomayor Hearings Lead News; Palin Tops Online News

The Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor topped the news agenda last week, filling almost one-quarter of the newshole and accounting for one-third of the cable airtime. But ironically, the media narrative found that the most newsworthy element of the confirmation showdown was the absence of news. Depending on where you went in the world of social media last week, you would have been seen a dramatically different news agenda. The mix of news on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube varied greatly according to the New Media Index by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.