Study: Journalists turn to blogs

[via micropersuasion]

A new study has found that a majority (51%) of journalists are looking to blogs for story ideas and research.   Clickz has the full story.

Here's an excerpt from their post:

Weblogs seem poised to wield a greater influence over journalists -- and therefore over the stories they disseminate via the mainstream media -- in the coming year. Sixty-eight percent of respondents believe that blogs will become a more popular tool for corporations seeking to inform consumers.

With The Tour fast approaching there will be hundreds of journalists surfing the web for cycling-related story ideas and facts.  With blogs being so search-friendly, I'm sure they'll be bumping into them much more than standard websites.  Will they bump into yours?

Comments

[Chris Lesser]

From that same report: "Only 1 percent of journalists found blogs credible, the study found"

But at the risk of my first comment on this site coming off as a pot shot, there are story ideas out there in the blogosphere, as there are everywhere else on the Internet.

[Tim]

IMO, 'real' journalists have to say this because blogs are a threat to their lively hood.

I also believe blogs are credible within the world they live. People tend to only believe things that fit into their own worldview anyway, so if a blog talks about things relevent and logical to them, then it is a good and credible source.

If anybody thinks that traditional media (newspapers, nightly news on CBS, etc) isn't without it's own bias and wordveiw then they are so mistaken. The problem traditional media has with blogs is that they have gone from very little accountability and competition in the past to an extreme amount of both in a just a couple shorts years of blogging.

[Jonathan]

Chris,

Great to see your comment. I won't repeat what Tim said but I think he makes a valid point.

I'd like to see more details from that part of the study. A statement like "only 1% of journalists found blogs credible," is too general to mean anything. Blogs cannot be neatly categorized and/or generalized. Blogs are usually created by an individual (vs. a corporation) so each one is unique and should be judged on its own merits. (Here's a post on how to measure a blogger's credibility).

I hope we don't see a divide between journalists and bloggers. In my opinion, many journalists would make great bloggers and vice versa. A great example of this is Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and his blog, The Long Tail.

Regardless of what this study found, journalists - and anyone whose career depends on information - must learn how to navigate the blogosphere. It's not a matter of debating which ones are credible, it's a matter of realizing that blogging is not some overhyped fad but a fundamental shift in how people communicate and learn.

[Chris Lesser]

Maus said: "Regardless of what this study found, journalists - and anyone whose career depends on information - must learn how to navigate the blogosphere."

True that, brother man.

I was just busting Jonathan’s chops on the "Study: Journalists turn to blogs" post because he trumpeted the good stuff and auspiciously omitted the "Only one percent of journalists find blogs credible" bit.

Of course, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. (If one part of the study is "too general to mean anything" then don't quote the favorable parts, as all the conclusions of said study are drawn from the same data.)

As for Tim’s comment, RE: ‘real’ journalists, blogs have been around for awhile, so have newspapers. Neither are going anywhere anytime soon. Most professional bloggers are, in fact, also “real” journalists, and that’s not an accident. It’s because journalism has rules, both overt (fair arguments, don’t make stuff up, etc.) and de facto (has to be timely and interesting or else no one cares).

That said, journalists are not an exclusive group, all the more true with the advent of blogs/self publishing. But to be taken seriously blogs have to play by the rules.

These rules aren’t arbitrary but born of necessity and honed over years and years of a free press, and they stand true whether you’re running a gossip tabloid or the newspaper of record. The extent to which you play by the rules equates to how seriously people take you, ergo people take stories in the Inquirer with a grain of salt, same with most blogs (say, 99 percent of ‘em).

Blogs can be credible within the world they live, granted, but to establish that credibility they have to be consistently accurate and fair, not to mention interesting, timely and relevant. That’s why people tune in, and that, in turn, is why advertisers tune in.

Blogs add to the conversation and to that end have been incorporated into traditional media. They have not and will not replace traditional media wholesale. That’s too absolute.

The thing about traditional media is that it’s not just a bunch of lazy wonks scanning blogs for stories. Newspapers, magazines and TV media generate revenue (via advertisers (vicious and contentious circle)). They can give their reporters travel budgets to get out from in front of the computer and scoop stories, meet people face to face and develop perspective. Traditional media have money to hire educated and experienced staff and money and resources to enable said staff to work full-time at their *profession*.