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Fact-checking Facebook?
Study finds vast majority of reporters and editors utilize social media outlets when researching stories.
Conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations, the survey examines the rapid growth of social media outlets as information sources for mainstream journalists. While aware of the need to verify information acquired from such sources, among the journalists surveyed, 89 percent frequent blogs for story research, 61 percent use Wikipedia, 65 percent admit to utilizing Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52 percent subscribe to microblogging services like Twitter.
Complete survey results available here.
Reporter Beats Garbage Collector, Loses to Dish Washer
Posted by Kate Nacy in New Media, Regional Studies on February 3, 2010
News reporter scores low on CareerCast.com’s 2010 job ranking, just ahead of the ever-glamorous stevedore, a career focused on the loading and unloading of cargo.
CareerCast ranked a total of 200 jobs, scoring and separating data among five categories: physical demands, work environment, income, stress and hiring outlook. While actuary, computer scientist and biologist hold leading positions, media-related occupations fall short of the top 50. Publication editor scores highest (at #65), with newspaper reporter creeping in at a lowly #184 and photojournalist bringing in the tail at #189.
Time to Pay Up?
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Economics on January 19, 2010
All things free must come to an end, right? So it is for the post-2007 free Internet access to nytimes.com content.
According to New York Magazine, “Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its Web site, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.” In the running for potential new payment structures are a metered pay system and a model in which specific portions of the site are free while others are available by subscription only.
Read more at New York Magazine.
Schizophrenic Relations
Last November, a conference hosted by the Institute of Applied Media Studies in Winterthur, Switzerland, examined the relationships among journalism, scholarship and the public interest.
Barbie Zelizer, director of the Annenberg Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, lead the discussion sharing insight and incisive research on what she deems, “the schizophrenic treatment of journalism.” Zelizer was kind enough to provide EJO with the research paper she presented, entitled, “What Can Journalism Scholarship Tell Us About Journalism?” Read the rest of this entry »
What is the “Public Interest”?
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Ethics on January 14, 2010
When and under which conditions is journalism in the “public interest?”
If one does not complacently assume whatever journalists publish is serving the common good, one gets into trouble finding a plausible answer to this question, or even an answer on which consensus may be reached. Stephen Whittle and Glenda Cooper from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University set out to provide clarification on the subject with their study, “Privacy, Probity and the Public Interest,” which asks when peeking through a keyhole or whipping out a camera phone is justified in the conflict between private sphere and public service.
White and Cooper may not deliver breathtaking new insights, yet their research, which focuses on a selection of widely-discussed cases of media coverage in the U.K., gets close to the point. Read the rest of this entry »
Terror of the Media
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Media Effects on January 14, 2010
Concerning the fight against terrorism, here’s a bit of hypothetical food for thought: What would’ve happened if the media “adequately” covered the failed suicide attack in the skies over Detroit?
Perhaps a short paragraph or casual mention, avoiding hype and neglecting to stroke our fears of al-Qaida. In such a case, few politicians would use the body scanner issue as a means of heightening their own profiles. Even if successful suicide attacks generated little or no media attention, as so many other acts of violence and war across the globe manage to escape media attention each day, wouldn’t al-Qaida loose most of its power? Read the rest of this entry »
Freelance Approaches Free
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Economics on January 9, 2010
Tight budgets squeeze freelancers out of a living. A passable wage is generally accepted as the element which distinguishes a particular vocation from a profession.
At some point in recent history, writing seems to have been demoted from a profession to something resembling a hobby. Compensation for freelance writing gigs is nothing shy of pitiful. According to the Los Angeles Times‘ James Rainey, “Seasoned professionals have seen their income drop by 50% or more as publishers fill the Web’s seemingly limitless news hole, Read the rest of this entry »
Perilous Coverage
Posted by Kate Nacy in Crises and Scandals on January 5, 2010
Paris-based NGO Reporters without Borders cites war and disputed elections as most substantial threats to journalists.
The close of 2009 marks the close of an especially grim year in journalism. The number of murdered journalists rose 26 percent, while violence against journalists increased by a third. This was a year marred by kidnappings, threats, forced exile and censorship. With more than 100 bloggers imprisoned for dissent worldwide, the crackdown on cyber expression is growing in severity. China was the largest offender in 2009, although Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Read the rest of this entry »
Driving the Death of the Written Word
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Effects on December 31, 2009
A study conducted by Prof. Roger Bohn and Dr. James Short of the University of California at San Diego dispels the notion that visually stimulating forms of media are driving the death of the written word.
Of the 100,500 words they consume each day, Americans read 36 percent. Revealing that reading actually tripled between 1980 and 2008, UCSD researchers suggest the influx of new technologies is actually causing people to read even more than they used to. Concerning the study, Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired writes, “Technology may have truncated and warped the written word in some cases, while increasing competition for our time. But as borne out by this new data, technology hasn’t found a substitute for the written word as a means of conveying certain types of information.”
Read more at Wired.
Minaret Media Hype
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Political Journalism on December 16, 2009
Austrians are all too familiar with the unfavorable media attention focused on their Swiss neighbors, for as the Austrians learned, once the electorate sheers obstreperously from the consensus of “political correctness“ on which political elites tend to agree, all hell breaks loose.
Larger neighboring countries descend on small ones, and the media’s buzz climbs to a roar. Reporters immediately become “experts” on the psyche and internal functions of adjacent nations, speculating wildly. As serious, comprehensive investigation costs time and money Read the rest of this entry »
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