Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Arketi just released a study of how journalists use the web. I wasn’t surprised by their topline findings at all. But when I downloaded the free report here, I was surprise by some of the details.

Topline findings:

90% of journalists say they turn to industry sources for story ideas, an equal number get story ideas from news releases and a nearly equal number say they tap into public relations contacts.

• 79% of journalists report finding story ideas on newswires
• 74% say from Web sites
• 72% say from other media outlets
• 54% look for story ideas in the blogosphere

Here’s where it got interesting for me:

Only half of journalists surveyed utilized RSS for their research. I’m assuming they’d rather wander about in search engines than utilize smart tools (free RSS readers abound, I use Attensa for Outlook) to keep an eye out for ideas and information for them.

With all the clutter and “noise” online, I would think that those who do research for a living (as any marketer should - at least part of the time) would utilize every smart tool available to increase relevancy, productivity and time to market all at once.

Scott over at Attensa, in a post called “Enterprise RSS: Why Not Just Use Google Reader?” put it very succinctly, as he usually does:

“[RSS] can help identify (and hopefully reduce) occupational spam and be a driver for improving the quality of… communications.”

Frankly, if more editors and marketers would even just use Google reader, they’d be taking the first step toward true productivity. And if news organizations would help their poor editors out by adopting true enterprise RSS tools for their editors, the entire organization would be taking generational leaps forward - productivity drives business these days.

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