While “Me, Myself & I” are busy “rearranging” the garage (at long last), Eagle-Eyes and Hammerhead are searching our Cybersphere and our local Cyberplace for items that – “hit the nail on the head” or merit posting on Petaluma360. However, there hasn’t been too much Cyber-news to get too excited about lately.
One item in today’s printed edition of the Argus-Courier that bears highlighting is the announcement about the new book being released this month that celebrates Petaluma‘s 150th birthday. As we all know by now, 2008 is the Sesquicentennial year for the City of Petaluma and a number of events are scheduled throughout the year. Another headline – “we need community impact reporting” topped the “Guest Commentary” by Tiffany Renee. Stay tuned.
Another headline (found online by Eagle-Eyes) – “Blogs Influence Journalists, Nearly all Facets of News Coverage” reported some interesting new media trends, according to a survey by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicon Corp. Two conclusions that jumped off the page and caused “Me” to take a second look were: (1) The speed and availability of news is the biggest impact of blogs, and (2) Over half of those reporters participating in the survey (178 out of 4,000) felt that blogs were having a “significant” impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and the editorial direection (51.1%) of news reporting. “I” (on the otherhand), wasn’t too impressed by the response rate for this survey (only 0.0445%); but, it’s better than nothing.
Many citizen bloggers (also known as “amateur” journalists) are interested in what “professional” journalists think about the impact of bloggers on reporting local community news. A few other findings worth sharing with Petaluma360 readers are by Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur, “It appears that reporters are using blogs more for ethnographic research than they are for investigative research,” and While only a small percentage of journalists feel that blogs are helpful in generating sources or exclusives, they do see blogs as particularly useful in helping them better understand the context of a story, a new story angle, or a new story idea.” It was also reported that “over one in five (20.9%) reporters said they spend over an hour per day reading blogs, and nearly three in five (57.1%) reporters said they read blogs at least two to three times a week.”
Petalumans know that the Argus-Courier encourages local bloggers to submit their thoughts, ideas, and opinions to Petaluma360. Several of these bloggers have generated a core of regular readers, and many of those readers have posted comments from time to time. Jerry Johnson also stated, “The blogosphere’s tail is not wagging the media body – at least not yet,” and “like any new social phenomenon, the blogosphere has become a resource for reporters, but reporters are still creating their stories by going out and developing their own ideas and talking to their sources.”
Yes – “Me, Myself & I” know that they didn’t do the original research or investigation for this blog. They are simply relaying the essence of the survey’s findings to you – our readers – just in case our local newespapers do not cover such news. (Eagle-Eyes also felt it would be important to acknowledge this fact because, in the past, professional journalists have criticized some bloggers for being nothing but “copycats.”)
“Myself” is wondering how our local news reporters feel about these findings. Maybe they would like to make a comment or share their reactions to this blog. Better yet, perhaps they might find the time to write their own article (online or in the printed edition), stating their thoughts about these trends. Stay tuned.