Annual Survey of the Media

I promised back on June 20th to write a little bit about an event that I attended. This was the roundtable discussion presented by Euro RSCG Magnet, regarding the "11th Annual Survey of the Media". This study, co-sponsored by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was managed by my account group and hosted on ICR's web server. The symposium was held on one of the top floors of the Reuters Building, which made for incredible views of the Hudson River and cemented in my mind that ICR is going to have to cooperate with Magnet to reserve this space again when we present a "public relations and research" workshop later in 2006.

Taking the lead in presenting the study findings was the notable Professor Steven S. Ross. He displayed a good number of slides relating to the findings of the survey, a summary of which can be seen here. But the one thing that amazed me most was Ross' comment that even though he's been conducting this study for 11 years now, and that he has always offered the raw data set for other organizations or individuals to analyze, no entity outside of Columbia has even taken him up on that offer. That's strange and disappointing.

Anyway, since we're a blog, I have to point out that while the study found more than half of the journalists surveyed are using blogs (mostly for generating story ideas and spotting trends) in their work, only 1% -- ONE percent -- said that blogs are a credible news source. I will be interested to see how next year's survey compares on that particular finding.

Last point, and just a humorous one. I got a kick out of how distinctly-English journalist Dan Roberts (of the Financial Times) used the phrase "rose-tinted spectacles"; here in the States, more commonly referred to as "rose colored glasses". I think I actually prefer the British style.