Journalism and social media whitepaper
Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 14:52
Daryl Willcox publishing has today released a whitepaper about how journalists have adapted to the rise of social media over the last five years, which I wrote for them.
The report is aimed largely at an audience of PR professionals who want an insight into how journalists think about social media, and it is being published alongside a survey about how journalists use social media. I must say some of the findings of that survey surprise me:
out of the
922956 journalists surveyed, over 200 made additional comments – some scathing, slamming social media as a pointless communication channel to manage, and some pointing to the fact they are now dependent on these websites as news sources.
Other findings of the survey were less surprising:
The survey also found that little more than one per cent of respondents claimed they were using social media less than they were 12 months ago, confirmation that journalists reject the notion that social media may be a fad.
One of the great frustrations of working on this project has been that the topic is so fast moving that the paper is inevitably out of date already. In the few weeks since I finished writing this, there has been quite a lot of additional information and new examples that I would have loved to include:
- The Project for Excellence in Journalism showed how Facebook had become a critical traffic driver to US news sites in 2010, while Twitter was making less of an impact.
- The Oriella Digital Journalism study found that journalists increasingly use social media – but also that the majority still don’t.
- The sessions of the BBC Social Media Summit provided a great deal of insight into how newsrooms in Britain and around the world view social media.
There have also been some interesting case studies in journalists’ use of social media, most notably the critical role of New York Times journalist Brian Stelter’s (re-)tweeting in breaking the story of Osama bin Laden on Twitter. In Britain, we have seen Twitter play an central role in the debate about privacy injunctions.
Somewhat less dramatically, Stefanie Gordon’s images of the Space Shuttle Endeavour provided an excellent case study of how images published on social media sites rapidly becomes incorporated into news organisations’ output.
Inevitably, the best way to keep up to speed with developments in social media and journalism is by participating in the link sharing communities that social networking sites enable. So here’s one place to start: my feed of social media and journalism links.
Media Week: How long can News International hide its ABCe figures?
Thursday, 27 January 2011, 17:59
"Under the current industry agreements, the James Murdoch-led operation has just two more months of grace before either pulling out of ABC membership altogether, or successfully instigating a change to the way the association operates."
Press Gazette: Guardian memo: 54,000 a month behind Times paywall
Thursday, 9 December 2010, 11:49
"New research from Experian Hitwise has been used by The Guardian to suggests that 54,000 people a month are accessing content behind the paywall of The Times and Sunday Times. The research was commissioned by Guardian News and Media and published internally on the company’s intranet yesterday."
New York Times: Some Newspapers Shift Coverage After Tracking Readers Online
Monday, 6 September 2010, 10:38
"Looking to the public for insight on how to cover a topic is never comfortable for newsrooms, which have the deeply held belief that readers come to a newspaper not only for its information but also for its editorial judgment. But many newsrooms now seem to be re-examining that idea and embracing, albeit cautiously, a more democratic approach to serving up the news, particularly online."
IT Pro: One in six UK page views are Facebook
Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 13:59
"a new study by research firm Hitwise, which showed the social network was responsible for 16.73 per cent of the page views from our shores."
However, despite this seemingly untouchable dominance, it was still only the second most visited site in the UK, with Google taking the crown at 9.59 per cent of all visits.
Folio: What Kind of Online Editor Are You?
Tuesday, 6 July 2010, 17:14
"At b-to-b publisher Questex Media, manager of search Alison McPartland and her team have developed a strategy that includes defining key areas certain editors are good at, and trying to apply those lessons to other editors within the group. … Below are four benchmark classifications for online editors that McPartland and her group developed: Acquisition Expert … Optimization Editor … Retention Writer … Engagement Enhancer…"
Hitwise Intelligence: Times paywall: initial data and analysis
Thursday, 24 June 2010, 13:29
Robin Goad: "what has the impact [of the paywall] been on traffic to the Times website? … We have aggregated traffic to both old and new Times sites in order to cut out any double counting and provide a consistent comparison and, as you can see, the title’s market share has dropped from 4.37% during the week ending May 22nd to 2.67% last week (w/e June 19th). … since it forced users to register in order to view its content, the Times has lost market share. However, this decline has clearly not been catastrophic and none of the paper’s rivals has particularly benefitted."
BBC: The Editors: A new record
Saturday, 8 May 2010, 13:16
Steve Herrmann: The BBC News website "had 11.4m individual users to the News website on Friday – approximately – so that breaks our previous record of 9.2m … Over 100m page views in total … About 6.5m page views to the election live page."
NewTeeVee: Are Publishers Ready to Embrace the iPad — Without Ads or Analytics?
Thursday, 1 April 2010, 17:01
"With the launch of the Apple iPad … many web video publishers are already getting ready for the device by rolling out new video pages that will support HTML5 web video delivery … The problem is that HTML5 is still in its infancy, and as a result heavily lags behind Adobe Flash for features that many video publishers already take for granted."
New Media Age: Paywall publishers abandon old audience measures
Wednesday, 31 March 2010, 09:19
"News International has suspended its membership to web traffic measuring firm ABC Electronic following its announcement it will introduce paywalls in June."
Search Engine Land: Stat Rant: Does Facebook Trumps Google For News & Can’t We Measure Twitter Correctly?
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 11:10
Danny Sullivan: "Earlier this week, Hitwise put out stats suggesting that Facebook is beating Google and Twitter when it comes to driving traffic to news sites. I dug a little deeper, and I beg to differ."
BBC News: The top 100 sites on the internet
Friday, 12 March 2010, 17:34
"Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company. This feature is part of SuperPower, a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet."
Media Week: Change in ABCe reporting makes Mail Online most popular website
Friday, 26 February 2010, 08:32
"[ABCe] had made as its the headline number in its monthly multi-platform report, the daily average number of browsing devices accessing a website. It defines this as the sum of each day's traffic, divided by the total number of days. Unique browsers (ABCe has dropped the term 'unique users') are not de-duplicated between days."
Steve Yelvington: The soft paywall: Some more numbers to chew on
Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 08:32
"On a wide array of local news websites, we're finding that heavy users — people who visit more than 20 sessions a month, roughly equivalent to once every workday — account for a disproportionately large percentage of the pageviews delivered on the sites. … They might account for only 2 or 3 percent of the total unique users each month, but 20 to 30 percent of the pageviews."
