Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, writes a great social media report. Today’s issue is about why PR practitioners must learn to get their news content visible in search, but one fact caught my attention: 95 of the top 100 newspapers now have a blog.
Nielsen/NetRatings reports that unique visitors to the largest Internet newspaper blog sites rose from 1.2 million in December 2005 to 3.8 million in December 2006.
Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, points to this post about journalists blogging: The Stand Alone Journalist is Here (“And the newsroom has left the building.”) And in this post he tells us about a site for journalists who are learning to stand alone and blog. “To keep the professional press going, the news tribe will have to migrate across the digital divide and re-settle itself on terra nova,” says Rosen.
The Brodeur study done in January showed that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news but also influencing the tone and editorial direction of reporting. “While only a small percentage of journalists feel that blogs are helpful in generating sources or exclusives, they do see blogs as particularly useful in helping them better understand the context of a story, a new story angle, or a new story idea,” said Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur.
Wall Street Journal tech reporter Nick Wingfield tells Bulldog Reporter how journalists use blogs in their jobs.
- A ticker files when researching stories
- To get tips they used to get from trade pubs and newsletters
- As sounding boards – to get a feel for the conversation aorund a new idea or product
- A digest of the day’s news. RSS feeds cherry pick headlines from blogs a reporter wants to watch
- To find useful information. Journalists don’t read the personal diary type blogs
So a statement like ‘our news is not online or in search because we’re not looking for blog coverage’ makes no sense at all. The relationship between blogs and mainstream media is a fact of life. Learn to use it to your advantage.
