Chasing Tails: The Most Ironic Blog Entry Ever

How many times have you heard: Social media is EXPLODING and it’s only a matter of time before it takes over traditional media.

Well yes, social media has grown rapidly as people discover new tools for sharing information and keeping in touch. As newsrooms everywhere shrink, right along with their readership, people are turning to these new tools as a news source.

But consider these stats recently released by Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism:
• American legacy outlets like newspapers and broadcast accounted for 80% of all items linked to stories on blogs.
• Three outlets alone provided two-thirds of bloggers’ linked news articles: The New York Times, CNN and BBC.
• The favorite subject matter for Tweets on Twitter? Twitter itself, which accounted for 10% of all top stories. Apple products garnered 8% of top stories, Facebook received 7%, and Windows 7 got 5%.

Interestingly, the study also noted that many blogs were rooted in providing opinions, not facts, a la talk-radio.

My point (and I do have one): Social media is great. It lets everyone have a voice and democratizes our national conversation on all matter of topics. But by in large, bloggers are not doing the investigative work and fact checking of reporters at traditional media.

If you’d like an example of this in practice, please hit your refresh button and blink.

-- Alicia DeMatteo