Sarah Morgan
A survey released this morning asked a variety of beat reporters to rank blogs and social media news sources that they valued most highly. I’m looking forward to reading a copy of the full results, but in the meantime, an article with this pull quote about healthcare reporters is interesting (although they seem to be conflating web sites and social media):
The “big four” health sites followed by health care journalists were NIH, WebMD, Mayo Clinic and MSN Health. All of the remaining top 10 sites tested were far less likely to be followed regularly (or at all!) by health care journalists. For health reporters, views on credibility largely mirrored their active engagement. NIH and Mayo were, by far, viewed as the most credible of all sources of health care information, followed by WebMD and MSN Health.
Alongside the article, you can see some graphs on what each beat think of social media. While healthcare reporters didn’t like what it was doing for accuracy or quality in their field, they did like what it was doing for tone, editorial direction and diversity. And either way, they’re all very much immersed in it, spending extensive time reading, commenting and writing.
A cool snapshot of how social media are changing journalism from the inside, as well as from the outside.
