Seat at the Table

Core to communications is getting information out to the public.  Traditionally (as in, pre-Web 1.0), that was the domain of professional news organizations.  However, with the growth of UGC content in blogs, Twitter, podcasts and other Web-centric properties, you might often hear the argument that news organizations are losing control of news distribution.    While an interesting theory, so far, people’s news surfing habits are not backing it up.   For example,

We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following: