Armed with a grant from the PEW Charitable Trust, the Project For Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) will keep closer tabs on what's hot and what's not in daily news coverage.
PEJ has scheduled a Thursday press conference to outline its plans to do a daily content analysis of some 1,500 stories over 45 different news outlets per week to see which stories are getting covered and which aren't.
It will then present its findings as the top story each Tuesday on its Web site (), written by Associate Director Mark Jurkowitz.
PEJ has hired 15 coders who will monitor and do the content analysis.
The project, which is entering its tenth year, separated from the Columbia School of Journalism last July and affiliated with the PEW trust with the goal of expanding its mission to research the news, including ramping up its content analysis. It plans to increase the number of studies from a few per year to "dozens."
