adrian monck

Blogging and the future of journalism

Let’s be clear. The Zogby poll on bloggers is not good news for bloggers. The blogosphere has echoed to the sound of a press release being masticated by people who would like to swallow it without even chewing. People like us. Bloggers. Here’s what the PR said:

Zogby Poll: Most Say Bloggers, Citizen Reporters to Play Vital Role in Journalism’s Future

Online survey finds general public, media conference attendees agree that traditional news outlets could do a better job

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, a new WE Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

  • 64.8% said professional journalism was very important to the future of journalism.
  • 34.8% said citizen journalism was very important to the future of journalism.
  • 20% said blogging was very important to the future of journalism.

And what do they know? They don’t even trust their friends and neighbours to bring them the news.

Very important as a source of news and information?
Friends and neighbours 6.5%, blogs 9%, newspapers 29.8%, TV 37.7%, websites generally 42%.

Most trusted source of news and information?
Blogs 1.7%. Friends and neighbours 0.3%.

Where do you get most of your news and information?
Blogs 1.5%. Friends and neighbours 0.2%.

How important is journalism to the quality of your community?
Very important? 32.8%.

What community? We don’t trust our friends and neighbours to tell us anything!

Blogs aren’t journalism. Do we get it now? They’re blogs.

Postscript: According to the press release:

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) said they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism’s future.

With an +/-11.4% margin of error that could by 97.4% of media insiders or 74.6% of them. How many of them blog? +/-11.4% of them?

Adrian Monck

5 responses to “Blogging and the future of journalism”

  1. Hi Adrian.
    I am the founder of Trendirama.com, a community of online amateur writers. We write about the future of everything. I would like to invite you to write an article on our website, perhaps based on what you are mentioning here. Maybe you can write “The future of Journalism in the US” there? It is up to you, you choose the subject.
    You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish.
    You can even re-use some of what you’ve written here, in the last part of the article, “your view and comments”. That would save you time and still be interesting for readers.
    Look forward to hearing from you

    Best regards
    Javier Marti
    http://www.trendirama.com

  2. Dear Javier

    That’s very kind of you, but although my wife insists my blogging is a worthless waste of quality family time, she does insist that beyond this site I seek financial rather than social capital from non-blog activities. Good luck with the site,

    Best
    Adrian

  3. From what I can glean, your point is that the numbers from the Zogby poll must be wrong because although people say blogging is important, they don’t understand the importance of a community of neighbors? And the journalists who say blogging is important don’t really mean it because they don’t blog?

    I’m inclined to believe a poll when it comes from Zogby, which I consider a more credible source than my own friends and neighbors, or even you, as a blogger. And this poll’s news about blogging seems to coincide with other reports about the recent explosion in page views for newspaper blogs.

    What does strike me as suspect in the poll is this assertion that people aren’t satisfied with the news. It’s not odd because I don’t believe it, but it is odd because it contradicts recent research released by the Readership Institute that says folks trust newspapers more than any other medium. Saying newspapers are doing a bad job seems to contradict with saying one trusts them.

    Anyway, thanks for the post. If you could flesh out more why your so distrustful of the Zogby poll, I’d appreciate it.