Blogs are the banner of a (to paraphrase Bill Gates) “sea change” in the Internet world. As evidenced by Time Magazine‘s selection of the “Internet user” as person of the year, after a decade of widespread use, the Internet‘s playing field is being leveled. Ergo, the geeky kid down the block with something to say can ostensibly reach as many eyeballs as a big corporation with a hearty advertising budget.
Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University conducted an online survey of Print and Web journalists from September 1, 2009, to October 13, 2009, to measure use of, and attitudes toward, social media for researching and reporting stories. Social media is defined as blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, microblogging sites such as Twitter, photo/video sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr, and review sites or web discussion forums such as eopinions.com. Results are based on 371 responses.