Networks and blogs gaining momentum as viable sources of information

Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University recently conducted a national survey of reporters and editors to gauge their use of social media sources when researching stories.

This is a topic I’ve written about in the past, related to a separate survey that found 70 percent of journalists use social media for reporting, but the Cision survey provides a more up-to-date look at the data and an interesting counterpoint to my recent post about whether journalists are on board with social media

The Cision survey found 89 percent of journalists turn to blogs for story research, 65 percent to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, 61 percent to Wikipedia, and 52 percent to micro-blogging services such as Twitter. At first glance, it would appear that the majority of reporters and editors are “on board” with social media.

Is social media important to journalists?

According to the survey results, only 15 percent of respondents said social media is “important,” while 40 percent said “somewhat important.” Although use levels may be higher, take those stats with a grain of salt. I’m sure most journalists would say they use e-mail as part of their daily work, but only a very small percentage of the messages they receive are “important” to the work they do.

Of additional interest, the survey data suggest that journalists reporting and producing stories for Web sites found social media most important (69 percent), whereas traditional newspaper and magazine journalists found social media less important (48 percent). There are few surprises here, but the numbers are significant for media relations professionals to take into consideration when leveraging social media as part of their programs.

Eye-opening blog numbers

What is surprising is the number of journalists who cited blogs as an important source of background information for story research--89 percent of the journalists surveyed use blogs for their online research.  Only corporate Web sites ranked higher (96 percent) as a research tool for journalists.

What’s the takeaway here? Make sure you have your newsroom up to date before you launch that blogging initiative, but get on the blogging bandwagon fast if you’re not there already.

It’s also obvious from the survey data that journalists are warming up to social networking sites for story research. If your expert sources aren’t already using LinkedIn and Facebook to promote their expertise, this should become a component of your PR strategy.

This is the type of data PR professionals need in order to develop more effective communications strategies. Read more about the survey results in the Cision press release here.

Jeremy Porter is a veteran public relations professional with more than 10 years of experience developing and managing strategic public relations programs for clients. He is the founder of Journalistics.com.