"The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago," opens the latest "State of the News Media" report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Among the major findings is that the Internet is not yet the democratizing media force many hoped for. "Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before," the report states. A detailed analysis of the news stories covered in 2007 found that "the media and the public often disagreed about which stories were important," and that U.S. media mostly ignored the rest of the world. Even though 2007 "was the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since that war began," less than one percent of international news dealt with that country. And journalists are more pessimistic, especially about "cutbacks in the newsroom" and the "broken economic model" for many news operations.

After the tragic collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis last August, the state wants to "restore the image of the beleaguered Minnesota Department of Transportation." So Minnesota is paying the public relations firm Himle Horner at least $550,000. The firm's work includes a "proactive, on-the-ground" initiative with "information kiosks, attempts to shape media coverage and weekly 'sidewalk superintendent tours' of the construction work." It also plans "to use a webcam to beam a half-hour live educational show from the bridge site to all Minnesota school-age children." The PR campaign was a major part of the bridge reconstruction contract. The U.S. Department of Transportation said the contract "emphasized public relations and aesthetics more heavily" than similar projects in the state. Some are questioning the need for the PR. "Who's against building a new 35W bridge?" asked the legislative director of the advocacy group Minnesota Transportation Alliance. "It ain't the spin, it's the span," quipped one columnist.

Robin RaskinIn his new book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, Farhad Manjoo covers video news releases (VNRs) by looking at "VNR Queen" Robin Raskin. Manjoo describes a high-tech holiday gifts segment by Raskin, in which she warned that Apple's iPod makes kids vulnerable to "iPorn." While the Radio-Television News Directors Association -- which opposes any action to ensure VNR disclosure -- refused to talk with Manjoo, Raskin did. "I actually joked with my own colleagues that, 'Hey, I'm off to go do Whore TV'," she told him. "I was fully aware that that's what it was. And yet it's such a commonplace thing. I mean, there are people hawking drugs, guns, war. The worst that could happen to someone watching my segment is that you might buy a game you don't like."

Republican strategists are salivating over the "inflammatory sermons by Obama's pastor" Jeremiah Wright. They believe that Wright's sermons "offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base." Notwithstanding Obama's highly praised speech on race yesterday, the videos of Wright's sermons have "convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey." According to Micah Sifry, "Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the 'truth' of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet -- and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the 'politics' of a speech, but its actual content? In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?"

"Congress' ability to curb the explosive rise in drug costs is a bellwether of the political prospects for health care reform," writes Merrill Goozner. "Along with eliminating unnecessary payments to insurance firms (like the 12 percent bump they get for selling Medicare Advantage plans), curbing Big Pharma's voracious appetite for selling overpriced and often unnecessary drugs is the low-hanging fruit of cost control." In order to prevent this from happening, therefore, drug companies are wooing Democrats, ramping up campaign contributions to Democratic politicians and hiring lobbyists who formerly worked as aides to Democratic politicians including Nancy Pelosi, Max Baucus, Charles Rangel and Ted Kennedy. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's main lobbying group, is "leaving nothing to chance," Goozner writes, forming coalitions with other groups including the American Association of Retired Persons, the American Lung Association and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America "in the hope that it will curb their new allies' appetites for going after Big Pharma."