The Top Story Index

View Report Archive:
News Coverage Index (on Project for Excellence in Journalism website)
News Interest Index (on the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press website)

About the Top Story Index

The Top Story Index is designed to compare and contrast – on an ongoing basis -- the news agenda of the media with the news agenda of the public. It does so by combining a weekly gauge of the major topics of news coverage in the media with a weekly gauge of the major topics of news interest among the public.

The News Coverage Index (NCI) is an ongoing content analysis of the news conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is a part of the Pew Research Center. Each week the NCI catalogues and analyzes coverage from top news organizations across five major sectors of the media: newspapers, network television, cable television, radio and the internet. Every Tuesday, the News Coverage Index is updated on PewResearch.org to identify the top stories covered by the media during the preceding Sunday through Friday.

The News Interest Index (NII) is based on a weekly national survey of the public by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The telephone survey, conducted each week from Friday through Monday among a nationwide sample of approximately 1,000 adults, gauges public interest in, and reaction, to the most covered stories of the previous week, as measured by the NCI. Every Thursday, the most recent News Interest Index (NII) data is displayed on PewResearch.org alongside the most recent News Coverage Index (NCI) data in a chart that allows for comparison between the two indexes.

In analyzing differences between the media's news agenda and the public's news agenda, readers should bear in mind that the time periods covered by the two indexes differ by three days. Readers should also bear in mind that the weekly NCI provides a measure of the percentage of the total media news hole devoted to different topics in a given week, whereas the weekly NII asks the public to state which single story it has followed most closely among the six top stories that the media had been covering in the previous week. In short, while the two gauges are roughly comparable, they are not strictly equivalent.

For more information about the Center for the People & the Press's News Interest Index, go to people-press.org. For more information about the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, go to journalism.org.