The other morning I was lucky enough to catch Chris Loder, the head of the Media Relations team for Pfizer in NYC, he was speaking on Media Trends at an IABC Philadelphia event. His discussion centered around how the rules have changed in the media over the last two decades. 112 million bloggers, according to technorati, are the reason. Seems the established newspapers are even starting to cite blogs and other social media sites as sources for stories, not only in the pharmaceutical field, but as seen last week in the Gov. Spitzer story, as the New York Times linked to the governor’s alleged prostitute’s MySpace page.
Which leads to an interesting question, is it okay for the established media to be linking to blogs as sources? Chris also cited statistics that more than half of today’s journalists are “lurkers” (they look at blogs but don’t post) or have blogs of their own. As the number of newspapers drops from 1,697 in 1987 to 1,456 today (thanks, Chris for that stat, too), and the nightly news suffers and loses viewership – the web and blogs are filling the void to give people the “news.” Chris said he has to review hundreds of blogs related to the pharma industry each day - Cafe Pharma, Pharmagather, Pharmalot, and WSJ Health Blog- being some of the most influential – the fact that each of them links to others makes them stronger as a whole. But, there are countless blogs on any industry or activity you can think of – but should any Joe Schmo with a PC be deemed the next Walter Cronkite. When was the last time you saw a link form one newspaper site to another to read the content posted on the rival’s paper? It just doesn’t happen, but should it? Yet, on the blogosphere it is standard practice.
What are your thoughts on the subject, should bloggers been seen as credible sources, or is it a cop out for journalists to just “Google” their sources? What should companies be doing to address the bloggers out there, should they join in, make comments to set the record straight? How should they do it, anonymously or with truth and transparency? Lots of questions, let me know what you think?
Tags: Blogging · Communication · Social Media
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