Sources, myths, economics and moonshine.
A new survey is certain to stir the Clash of the Myths.
An overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media to research stories, according to a new study by The George Washington University and Cision intelligence services. Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. Most journalists said that social media were important or somewhat important for reporting and producing the stories they wrote.
From where do stories come? You.
That journalists would utilize all available resources seems obvious were it not for the fractious debate over hallowed ground. It goes like this: Blogs and social media are merely an echo chamber for what is reported by professionals.
Wired’s editor Chris Anderson calls that the “Derivative Myth.” He describes it this way: “Blogs which are mostly written by amateurs, couldn’t possibly do what We Do. Instead, they mostly just comment on what we do, supplying low-value-add chatter about our stories that must not be confused with Proper Journalism or other Quality Content from us Professionals.”
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism made a lot of ProJoes (proper journalists) feel better recently when it found in an examination of local news in Baltimore that while the news landscape has rapidly expanded, most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media—particularly newspapers. “These stories tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets,” PEJ concluded.
Which may be true for local news in one city, but probably not so true in the breadth of news coverage that occurs outside narrow, geographic boundaries — news that may be more consequential for the much larger audiences comprising the communities of interest that bring most people and their news together.
Sources make the news. They have proliferated in the connected society. They are available to most anyone, ProJoes included.
The best reporters add value to news by choosing sources wisely and by making the right kind of connections among circumstances, evidence, events, people and sources. It doesn’t matter if they blog, tweet or publish a story in print. It doesn’t matter if they work for a newspaper, an NGO or as a citizen. No institution has a monopoly on leading the public conversation. The rest is economics and moonshine. See the following:
