• by Tameka Kee , January 9, 2008

A majority of journalists say that blogs and other forms of social media are not affecting the quality of traditional news--for better or worse--but that the blogosphere is definitely having an impact on the speed, tone and editorial direction of their reporting.

Almost 180 reporters and editors across multiple industries responded to the e-mail survey sent out by Omnicom's Brodeur in mid-December. And while roughly 43% of respondents said that "new media" (blogs and social networks) had a "very" or "somewhat" significant impact on the quality of news coverage, most journalists (56%) said that the impact of new media was "not very" or "not at all" significant.

Not surprisingly, most respondents agreed that the ability to rapidly publish news and spread it via e-mail, widgets and social network profiles has impacted the art of journalism. Some 74% of journalists said that new media had a "very" or "somewhat" significant impact on the speed of news reporting.

Meanwhile, just over half of all respondents said that blogs and social media had a "somewhat" significant impact on the tone of the discussion around a news feature, and about 10% felt that the impact was "very" significant. And when it came to the editorial direction of their stories, respondents were just slightly (51%) more likely to say that social media had an impact.

According to Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur, journalists see blogs and social media as particularly helpful tools for gaining insight into the context of a story and generating new angles or ideas. "It appears that reporters are using blogs more for ethnographic research than they are for investigative research," Johnson said.

In terms of the survey demographics, the majority of respondents (45%) were business journalists, while 34% hailed from various industries like gaming, government and politics, and community news. Just 2% and 4% of the respondents worked in the tech and lifestyle industries, respectively.

The "Journalism, Social Media and the Blogosphere" survey is part of a joint research project by Brodeur and Marketwire to study the impact that social media is having on traditional news delivery.