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May
22
Oh yeah? Well I never.
Why this stuff comes in minutes before I should have been in bed, I don’t know – I’ll try to do more tomorrow but I suspect that the news from this study will be all over the place by the a.m. I’m cherry-picking for now and I have the full study in a pdf but I’m not looking at it tonight.
Here are the cherries:
In the study released today, Brodeur and partner Marketwire dug deeper to discern whether the influence of social media on traditional news delivery was viewed by journalists as being positive or negative.
“The results suggest that journalists have a love/hate relationship with new media,” said Jerry Johnson, executive vice president, Brodeur Strategies.
Nothing we haven’t tasted before.
Deeper in:
According to the study over half of all reporters from all beats said social media and blogs are having a positive influence on the editorial direction of reporting. Reporters were also overwhelmingly positive on the influence of social media and blogs on the diversity of reporting with approximately 4 in 5 reporters indicating a positive influence. However, views on tone, quality and accuracy varied by beat.
Well over two-thirds of political reporters (77%) and half of lifestyle reporters (53%) felt that social media had a negative impact on the tone of coverage in their area. Health care, travel and technology reporters were more likely to say that social media had a net positive impact on the tone of coverage in their area.
Hmm – really?
And finally:
REPORTERS RANK INDIVIDUAL BLOGS AND ONLINE NEWS SITES
The survey also asked reporters to rank some of the most popular social media news sites in their respective field. Overall, the survey results suggested that in areas such as politics and technology, a handful of online news sites are emerging as key media sources.
The results also suggested that some of the sites most frequently visited by journalists are not the sites they believe are most credible when it comes to content.
…
POLITICAL JOURNALISTS
Of the ten sites tested among political reporters, the most popular were Huffington Post, Real Clear Politics, Talking Points Memo, and Daily Kos. Of the remaining six sites, approximately two-thirds of political reporters said they’d never read them. When it came to the credibility of content, Huffington Post and Daily Kos topped the list with well over two-thirds of reporters saying their content was very or somewhat credible. Real Clear Politics and Talking Points Memo scored highest among political journalists in the category of “very credible” content. Nearly half (46%) and over one-third (39%) said their content was “very credible.”
Not sure what the other blogs were but will check tomorrow.
So, I want to know – did anyone ask those journalist why they don’t cite the blogs from which they get their ideas, huh, yeah, huh, yeah huh?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:44 pm May 22nd, 2008 in Blogging, Media, Politics, Research
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5 Responses to “Political journalists say: blogs have negative impact on tone, positive impact on editorial direction”
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Good journalists get their ideas from a million places, synthesizing everything they read, see, hear and observe, from both formal and informal channels. It’s the ultimate exercise in lifelong learning and the always-on lifestyle. It would be almost impossible to narrow that down to a few blogs, because that’s but a modest channel in the river of information that the good ones take in and digest.
Just FYI, Politico has an article up that relates to this (the best stuff is at the end).
How small stories become big news
By JOHN F. HARRIS
5/25/08 11:02 AM EST
http://tinyurl.com/6ab7d9
That may be true, John, however, most news folks keep their blog reading to a limited few. If you read Extreme Mortman, you may recall that he did a series in which he had newspaper people ID which blogs they consider to be must-reads.
P. Springer – wow, that’s an outstanding commentary. On the RFK thing, I believe he NAILS it exactly – makes me so made the way it’s being spun. Here’s what he wrote in that Politico link you offer:
Clinton does indeed mention the Kennedy assassination, speaking in a calm and analytical tone: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”
Martin and I both thought we saw a slight twinge in Clinton’s facial expression, as though she recognized she had just said something dumb.
Whether she recognized it or not, she had.
But it was also clear that Clinton’s error was not in saying something beyond the pale but in saying something that pulled from context would sound as if it were beyond the pale.
It would be a big story if Clinton said something like this: “Hey, I know it looks bad for me now. But, think about it. Obama could get shot and I’d get to be the nominee after all.”
It is a small story if Clinton said something like this: “Everyone talks like May is incredibly late, but by historical standards it is not. Think of all the famous milestones in presidential races that have taken place during June.”
It seems pretty obvious that the latter is what Clinton meant, and not too far from what she actually said. It was not surprising that the Argus Leader’s executive editor, Randall Beck, put out a statement saying, “Her reference to Mr. Kennedy’s assassination appeared to focus on the time line of his primary candidacy and not the assassination itself.”
Well, for most of these folks, I would guess there’s probably a pretty significant difference between how many they admit to reading and how many they actually do read. I wouldn’t take anything at face value on this subject.