Journalists becoming comfortable in 2008 with Internet media tools: survey

Tony Austin
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 11:04

Opinion and Analysis

The increase in journalists visiting social media sites to do their job has risen even more dramatically: Today about three-fourths of journalists use social media to research stories, compared with about 67% last year.

Almost 38% of journalists now say they visit a social media site at least once a week as part of their reporting, compared with only 28% last year. More than 53% now say they visit a social media site at least once a month, up from about 44% last year.

Nearly 19% of journalists report that they receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week, a gain of about three percentage points over last year, and a total of about 41% receive at least one regular RSS feed, a gain of over four percentage points.

While about half (48.7%) of journalists report that they never seek audio or video material from corporate websites, nearly 23% say they seek such material at least once a month—an increase of about three percentage points over the past year.

Among journalists working in national television, some 10.3% seek audio or video material once a week or more and that number jumps to 46.7% seeking such material at least once every three months.

Among journalists working in local radio, some 38.4% seek audio or video from corporate websites at least once a month.

While a large majority (76.4%) of journalists report that they use their local newspapers to follow the news (followed by the New York Times at nearly 63%), some 51% of journalists report that they use Google News, about 32% use Yahoo! News services to stay abreast.

Hmmm. I wonder what such a survey would show for Australia, and other parts of the world. ... Any comments?