A George Washington University/Cision study found that 89 percent of journalists use blogs for story research. Nearly 70 percent said they used social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, while 52 percent used micro blogs like Twitter.
The study also found that Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia, was a source for just more than half of the reporters surveyed.
“Mainstream media have clearly hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting,” said Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision North America. “However, it’s also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors’ and reporters’ reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism.”
Reporters still rely a great deal on public relations professionals to help them with their research, according to the study.
