The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has issued its eight annual State of the News Media report today. It's a definitive look at American media, with some implications for media outside the U.S. in trends and practices.

The report concludes that, with the exception of newspapers, media operated better in 2010 than in 2009 on many frontiers. Some new business models began to blossom, for instance.
But the report says that the problems aren't involving audiences or even the new models.

"It may be that in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own destiny," the executive summary of the report concludes. New intermediaries are adding layers to the relationship between consumers and advertisers, whether they are software manufacturers or platform creators, and their share of the revenue and data pose new challenges.

Among major trends: executives from outside, some willingness to pay, untapped local news opportunities, a new media economy of smaller entities,  and assistance to media via the car bailout.

The report looks at newspapers, online, television networks, cable television, ethnic and alternative press, magazines, audio and some special reports on, among other things, international newspaper  economics and the online experiments in Seattle.