Social Media Use Finally on the Rise for Mainstream Media?

By Kyle Austin

Social media is obviously a hot topic for the mainstream media. They see opportunity in using it towards turning their career paths and organizations around, and thus their coverage of it is through the roof.

That said, it was puzzling to hear earlier this year that a survey by PR Week / PRNewswire found that  only 22% of journalists were leveraging Twitter for crowd-sourcing, connecting with readers and aggregating their stories on the Web. A separate survey, around the same time, by the TEKgroup found that only 38% of journalists would be interested in receiving corporate news via corporate Twitter handles. Yes, those second numbers seemed promising, but where were the mandates to adopt these strategies – FAST?

Well, perhaps the moves by media organizations like the New York Times, to get serious with social media have paid off. 

According to a new survey from Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), 70% of journalists said they use social networks to assist in reporting. Compare that to the 41% that said they used social networks to assist in last year’s “Survey of Media in the Wired World.”

The online survey, which will remain open for a few more weeks, has the responses of 317 journalists to date. Far less than the 2,174 polled by PR Week and PR Newswire in April, so the validity of the findings may be in doubt.

For what it’s worth, The Survey of Media in the Wired World also found that:

• 69% of journalists  go to company Web sites to assist in their reporting
• 66% use blogs
• 51% use Wikipedia
• 48% go to online videos
• 47% use Twitter or other microblogging services
• 30% use instant messaging
• 25% use podcasts

5 comments September 24th, 2009

TechCrunch to Embargoes: RIP

By Ben Haber

Almost a year after announcing that they would no longer accept most embargoed news, TechCrunch has declared that the embargo is officially dead – at least in their opinion. Michael Arrington argues that since Google and Microsoft are no longer able to hold their embargoes (PaidContent broke Google’s embargo about Sidewiki on Wednesday), the last tree in the forest has fallen, effectively leaving embargoes news on the side of the road for trash day.

The Wall Street Journal has also adopted a similar policy as TechCrunch, only accepting embargoes for exclusives.

One of the more interesting discussions comes in TechCrunch’s comments section, where one reader discusses the value of having multiple outlets reporting on news as opposed to one outlet that is granted an exclusive. In response, Sarah Lacy argues that it’s easier to get news just from one source which explains the popularity of aggregators like Techmeme. However, Techmeme is actually a collection of stories from various sources, effectively making the reader’s point that readers value different sources for information.

In any case, TechCrunch has declared that the embargo is officially dead, so now the big question is how many other outlets will follow suit…

4 comments September 24th, 2009