Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posted Tuesday on Editor and Publisher's March 11 article listing the four-year circulation changes at the nation's top 20 newspapers, concentrating on the 20% loss at the Los Angeles Times during that period.

What's also compelling is that the Top 20 really has three winners and 17 losers during that four-year time frame, as the chart that follows demonstrates:

Although a recent Sacred Heart University poll indicated 45.4 percent of respondents thought journalists and broadcasters are mostly or somewhat liberal - the bias isn't ideologically driven according to Newsweek editor Jon Meacham.

Meacham appeared on Comedy Central's January 21 "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and told viewers the media gear reporting toward conflict.

"I absolutely believe that the media is not ideologically driven, but conflict driven," Meacham said. "If we have a bias it's not that people are socially liberal, fiscally conservative or vice versa. It is that we are engaged in the storytelling business. And if you tell the same story again and again and again - it's kind of boring."

Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell is hot on the trail with a year long E&P tribute to local newspapers that are covering "the shocking number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq or after they return home". At first I figured this was a strange tribute to be making, especially considering that Mitchell didn't bother to present any facts when implying that the war is to blame for such tragic deaths. Instead Mitchell follows it up with an AP story about the apparent suicide of Army veteran Tyler Curtis and presents this incident as further proof to bolster the claim.

NEW YORK For the past year, E&P has paid tribute to local newspapers, sometimes quite small ones, that have covered extremely sensitive and revealing stories that previously gained little attention: the shocking number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq or after they return home. Recent studies suggest the figure, once in the hundreds, is now in the thousands.

Here's something America's media should be proud of: 64 percent of people surveyed do not trust press coverage of the presidential campaign.

Want to know the really inconvenient truth?

The study, done by Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership, was performed in September before the recent CNN Democrat presidential debate debacle in Las Vegas.

Just imagine what those numbers would look like now.

The following highlights of the survey were reported by Editor & Publisher Wednesday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NB reader CloseAll):

It is understandable, but not forgivable, that business reporters at Old Media newspapers might think that the economy is in bad shape. They first have to get past how poorly most of their employers are doing. The industry as a whole has not been doing well, and it's been that way for quite some time.

This table illustrates that point (September 30, 2007 figures are at this post, which originally came from this Editor & Publisher article, which will soon disappear behind its firewall; March 31, 2005 figures were estimated in reverse using annual percentage changes reported as of March 31, 2006, because older data I thought would remain available no longer is):

It appears that Editor & Publisher felt the need to get in front of some really bad news in the newspaper business. In fact, the sampling of numbers reported previews a report that will apparently be worse than others I have tracked (previous posts here, here, and here):

According to industry sources speaking to E&P, daily circulation for reporting papers in the six-month FAS-FAX period ending September is down about 2.5% while Sunday is expected to fall 3.5%. Those types of declines -- in the 2% and 3% range -- have been occurring as far back as the March 2005 period.

The definition of ironic? A media outlet that omitted positive information about Iraq...from an article that criticized the media for doing just that.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which is stationed in Iraq, spoke to reporters while on leave in the US. He denounced the media habit of omitting or downplaying positive news coming out of Iraq and then gave an example of the kind of news that is usually downplayed or omitted by the media (thnx NewsBusters reader).

In a perfect illustration of what Lynch meant, Editor & Publisher, a leading industry journal, let its metaphorical slip show and omitted Lynch's positive news about Iraq from the paper's September 21 article.

Editor & Publisher reported Friday that 25 out of 200 newspapers that regularly publish the "Opus" comic strip will not run back-to-back Sunday episodes that include Muslim references and a sex joke (h/t Dan Gainor, emphasis added throughout):

Berkeley Breathed's Aug. 26 and Sept. 2 strips -- which comprise sort of a two-part series -- show the Lola Granola character wanting to become an Islamic radicalist (and wear traditional Muslim clothing) because it's a "hot new fad on the planet." Content also includes what Shearer described as "a sex joke a little stronger than we normally see."

Think this would have been a problem if Lola was doing something that involved Judaism or Christianity? No, I don't either.

In fact, as you'll see from Sunday's strip which I include near the end of the post, the paranoia exhibited by papers afraid to publish this is almost offensive given the accepted level of atheism, agnosticism, and anti-theism -- aka secular progressiveness -- prominently and almost proudly displayed by most media outlets today. But I digress:

It seems that some folks at the Seattle Times got a bit giddy when they heard news of Karl Rove's resignation.

The paper's David Postman clarified in an August 14 "Postman on Politics" blog post that while it "sounds like a conservative's parody of how a news meeting would be run... It was only a couple of people who cheered [Rove's resignation] and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play."

Nevertheless, Postman noted that executive editor David Boardman has issued a warning to Seattle Times staff:

As we head into a major political year, now's a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself.

Kudos to Boardman for reminding his staffers to check their politics at the door.

See also Editor & Publisher's story and NewsBusters contributor Mithridate Ombud for a related post.