Maybe.
There’s an oldish (interesting what passes for “old” in blogging time) study that was released two weeks ago, which surveyed a whole bunch of American journalists over their attitudes on blogs, and more importantly, how they interact with them.
Have you ever wondered if mainstream journalists are reading blogs? Ever wonder if they’re appropriating the fresh, new, and fast ideas amongst bloggers on various issues and incorporating them into their work? … perhaps without crediting their sources?
It would be easy to do, after all. Bloggers live in a 24/7 world where amongst certain niches, bloggers live to break stories. There are no boundaries between when we “work” and when we “stop” working. And if you’re publishing for a deadline the next morning, it would be easy to not only scan the meaty news, and then search blogs for the “angle”, or interesting opinion on the story.
Do journalists do this?
Well, data says they really might.
According to the study, more than half of them read blogs between every day and 2-3 x per week; furthermore, more than half of them rated blogs as being “very useful” to “somewhat” useful for getting good angles on stories and gaining insight into the tone of the discussion. Just over 50% also admitted that blogs and social media had a significant impact in the potential editorial direction and tone of a piece.
Pretty interesting stuff, no?
I mean, the next time I read a piece where the blogosphere might have several opinions (perhaps breaking even breaking the news on said piece), I know that I’ll be wondering how many uncredited bloggers (A-list or no) that piece is sourcing.
5 Comments
My friends who report for professional publications freely tell me that this is the case. VentureBeat’s internal data also confirms it.
Eric — thanks for chiming in. I, of course, have almost no friends who work for professional publications, but I can see how tempting it would be. In some respects (such as opinion pieces) its like someone’s doing your homework for you.
All the time, and worse still they occasionally lift chunks for their own story and don’t provide attribution.
I’ve found at least two articles in the Vancouver Sun that have used quotes from my blog posts (that were both at least 6 months old at the time the article came out). They weren’t attributed properly and I was never contacted, it was kind of a fluke that I even found them, really.
I don’t necessarily think that it’s such a bad thing. There are times when bloggers also look to journalists for topics to post. I consider myself a blogger and a journalist. I must admit that I sometimes check out the news for something to write and vice-versa.