2008 Bulldog/TEK group reporter’s survey

The second annual survey of working journalists across all media generated responses from 2,386 journalists, of which approximately 48% were editors or editorial staff and 34% were reporters or writers. The survey tracks the resources journalists use to search, follow and report news and features material. 

There‘s been a significant increase in usage of blogs, social media and RSS feeds to stay on top of the news.

• Almost 75% of journalists read one or more blogs to keep up with the subject matter they cover, compared with only about 70% a year ago.
• 29% of journalists regularly read five or more blogs to keep up with their beat, compared with about 26% last year.

Social media use has seen an even bigger jump

• 75% 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.

 Tracking news with RSS Feeds has increased too:

• 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
• 47% of online journalists track more than five feeds
• 41% of journalists receive at least one regular RSS feed, a gain of over four percentage points.

Digital Assets – a new PR skill

23% of the journalists polled say they seek audio or video material from corporate websites 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.

Online News as a Resource

51% of journalists report that they use Google News and 32% use Yahoo! News services to follow the news.  That means they are searching news sites for information and you need to have all your digital assets – press relases, video and images – optimized for search.

See Also

• PRoactive Report – News and Media Relations in the Internet Age
  When news consumption changes so radically, the practice of PR and Media Relations has to change too. We can’t just go on doing ‘same old, same old” and hope for the best. It’s time to dig in and learn the rules of PR 2.0 and online media relations.