In a Different Race, TV Web Sites Win

IN A DIFFERENT RACE, TV WEB SITES WIN
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye]
There were winners on Election Day other than the Democrats. In the race for best media coverage, the winners were television Web sites, according to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which followed 32 different outlets, including newspaper Web sites, television programs, blogs, magazine Web sites and aggregators like Google and Yahoo. The Web sites of both network and cable television delivered results quickly, allowing users to dig as deeply as they wanted into exit poll information and interactive maps with reports on hundreds of races. The posting of once-privileged exit polls, which the networks pay for, and the linking with state boards of election for county-by-county results are changing the election-night equation between media organizations and consumers, the report said. “The exit poll may be more important today, not less, since users are probing that information directly, functioning as their own editors going state by state, looking for demographic information, late deciders and more,” the report said. The report noted that television Web sites did well in part because the exit poll data was reliable. If that data were misleading, however, as it has been in recent years, all news organizations would be vulnerable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/business/media/27election.html
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News Media Have Watershed Election, Too
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AP_ON_TV_ELECTION_LESSONS?SITE=KT...

See --
An Evening in the Life of the American Media
http://www.journalism.org/node/3015