PR Insight: How Journalists Use the Net

(Dit is een kopie van een helaas verdwenen artikel van Internet Day)

By Michael Pastore

The Internet has joined pens, notebooks, laptops, and tape recorders in the reporter's toolbox, and every year Associate Professor Steven Ross of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Don Middleberg, founder and CEO of the communications firm of Middleberg + Associates survey journalists on their use of the Internet.

The year 2000 marked the sixth annual Middleberg/Ross "Media in Cyberspace Study," which tracks the growth of online publishing, techniques for developing stories, how reporters work with sources online, the reporting of online rumors, the use of wireless devices, and instant messaging.

Nearly three-quarters of the respondents reported they go online daily, a huge jump from 48 percent in the 1999 survey. E-mail, with both readers and known sources, has become more popular with journalists, and one-quarter of the respondents reported using instant messaging.

Questionable ethical practices are also expanding along with journalists' use of the Internet. Reporters find the Web to be lacking in credibility, yet they admit to publishing rumors, as well as using online sources. When asked to rank Web sites based on credibility, only trade associations were found to be more credible than non-credible, the survey found. Message boards and chat groups were judged the least credible. But lack of credibility would not keep journalists from using Web postings, especially if the information is confirmed by another source. Seventeen percent said they would consider doing so in the future, even if not confirmed elsewhere.

More than half (60 percent) of respondents said they would consider reporting an Internet rumor if confirmed by an independent source, while only 12 percent said they would not, and 3 percent admitted to already having done so. Nineteen percent said they would if the rumor came from a "reliable" professional news site.

Other findings from the 2000 Media in Cyberspace Study include:

  • Weekly, journalists spend, on average, 4.7 hours online at home and 8.7 hours at the office.
  • The most popular use of the Internet is article research, which has displaced e-mail. Internet use for finding images almost doubled to 52 percent; in the previous four years it had been 21,23,25, and 29 percent, respectively.
  • Half of the respondents reported using the Internet in the development of story ideas and pitches, compared with 30 percent for the past three years.
  • Journalists are reading publications online more frequently, with almost two-thirds of respondents reporting they do so. In previous years, this never rose above 50 percent.
  • Even though 25 percent of respondents use instant messaging, only 6 percent use it daily.
  • Journalists say that responding to readers is part of the job. More than half say they regularly participate in dialogues with readers via e-mail, at least occasionally. One out of every seven newspaper respondents say they do so daily, and almost one-third do so at least weekly.

The survey was sent to more than 4,000 magazine and newspaper editors throughout the country. The response rate was approximately 10 percent.

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