Legal Marketing & PR

News Reporters Now Depend on Social Media Sources

By Larry Bodine

A national survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University found that an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories. Among the journalists surveyed:

• 89% said they turn to blogs for story research
• 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn
• 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter
• 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia.

While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media. Eighty-four percent said social media sources were 'slightly less' or 'much less' reliable than traditional media, with 49% saying social media suffers from 'lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards.

'Mainstream media have clearly hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting,' said Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision 'However, it's also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors' and reporters' reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism.'

The groups placing the highest levels of importance on social media for reporting and producing stories were journalists who spend most of their professional time writing for Websites. Those at newspapers  and magazines  reported this less often. The differences between magazine journalists and website journalists is statistically significant.

• Journalists who spend most of their professional time writing for Websites (69%) reported this the most often, and significantly more so than those at Magazines (48%)
• 89% of journalists reported using Blogs for their online research. Only Corporate websites (96%) is used by more journalists when doing online research for a story
• Approximately two-thirds reported using Social Networking sites and just over half make use of Twitter for online research. Newspaper journalists (72%) and those writing for Websites (75%) use Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook for online research significantly more often than those at Magazines (58%)

For more information visit http://us.cision.com/news_room/press_releases/2010/2010-1-20_gwu_survey.asp

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).