Social Media’s Staggering Influence on Journalists

All the news that's fit to fit on a status update.

Some amazing statistics released in 2010 on how social media drives content decisions for the traditional press and influences the way reporters and editors research and write news.

These stats are from Cision/GSPM media survey:

• 89 percent of journalists source stories from blogs

• 65 percent of journalists use Facebook and LinkedIn for research

• 61 percent of journalists rely on Wikipedia for information

• 52 percent of journalists use Twitter

These stats are from PRWeek/PR Newswire’s media survey:

• 62 percent of journalists are now required to write specifically for online news sections

• 39 percent of journalists are now required to blog

• 37 percent of journalists are now required to have a Twitter account

• 52 percent of bloggers now consider themselves journalists (up from 33 percent in 2009)

These are stats from the Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World:

• 91 percent of journalists believe social media and web technologies are enhancing journalism

• 80 percent of journalists believe bloggers have become “important opinion shapers” in recent years

• 70 percent of journalists use social networks (up 28 percent from 2008)

• 66 percent of journalists read blogs

• 48 percent of journalists use Twitter (up 25 percent from 2008)

• 48 percent of journalists watch videos online

• 25 percent of journalists listen to podcasts

Here are stats from a report on old and new media by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:

• 50 percent of Americans report that they “rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know.”

• 44 percent of Americans get news from email or via updates to social media networks

• 50 percent of links on Twitter go to mainstream media outlets, 40 percent to web-only news sources (such as blogs) and 10 percent to other sources (such as wire services)

• Bloggers rely heavily on mainstream media for sourcing with 99 percent of blog links going to mainstream media sources (and 80 percent of those links going to four outlets: BBC, CNN, New York Times and Washington Post)