PEJ: Mainstream Media, Blogosphere Have Different Focus

The only one of the top 10 stories covered by the mainstream media last week to crack the top 10 in the blogosphere or on Twitter was the debate about health care, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index, with the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation hearings failing to make the cut.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ruled the blogosphere, accounting for 33% of blogger links, mostly to a July 14 column she wrote for the Washington Post and a story in the Los Angeles Times the day before focusing on the heat Palin receives from fellow Republicans.

The next two stories in terms of blog links: A BBC story about how cats exploit humans by purring, and a since-removed Fox News story about Pentagon-designed robots powered by eating biomass and extracting energy from the surrounding environment.

The protests in Iran dominated news-related links on Twitter for the fifth week in a row.

And the two most-watched YouTube videos were of an ABC News story debunking the notion that a photo taken during the recent G8 Summit showed President Barack Obama admiring the backside of a passing woman, with the ABC report using a video of the event to conclude that Obama did nothing of the sort.

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