It was interesting to see how rapidly word of our PR survey spread. It seems to prove a couple of things - that the blogosphere has really speeded news up - and that blogs work well in tandem with the traditional media. Sometimes it is hard to define what is commercial publishing, and what is a blog . They are on a level playing field in terms of instant news.
In the past, only big news stories were reported ‘as they happened.’ A survey like ours would have languished a few days until a journalist on a weekly or monthly publication found a space or a quiet moment to write it up. Ours was ‘out there’ instantly.
I published at 11 pm GMT on Monday, sent out a few emails about it, and went to bed. In the morning, I woke up and found that The Blog Herald had posted an accurate summary, and that Micropersuasion had given us a link. By the time I had my breakfast,The Media Guardian was on the phone. I had a chat with their reporter, Dominic Timms, and he turned around a news feature article with accurate quotes and information by lunchtime. Around morning in the USA, Businessweek’s Blogspotting was on the case, and I received a phone call from Red Herring Magazine, asking permission to use our data next month.
Information was turning up on blogs everywhere. Some of it accurate, some of it a bit off the beam in terms of facts and figures. I’m not complaining, but you do notice more when the story is about you or something you’ve worked on.
At some stage, the newspaper with the longest history in the world, The Times had picked up the story. They didn’t mention the source of the survey, which was a bit odd, but it was a nice surprise all the same.
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Hugh, congratulations for the Blog Relations survey’s media coverage. I was wondering — are you OK with the fact that both The Guardian and The Times didn’t report about the limitations of your survey? Aren’t journalists supposed to indicate when the results of a survey can’t be projected outside the small sample of respondents? Shouldn’t they report the -small- number of respondents?
Hi Constantin
The Guardian wrote as follows: “the online survey, which the authors admit attracted responses from more blog-savvy professionalsâ€. I think that describes the general character of our sample well (although it did include some PRs who did not know much about blogs).
I’ve already written that it was odd that The Times did not quote the source, so that anyone who was particularly interested could look it up and find out the details.
We will see bigger survey numbers from Edelman and MIT who are sampling the entire blogosphere – 17 million bloggers by some estimates. We limited our survey to one profession. I don’t know how many PRs there are in the world, but thankfully it isn’t anything like that number.
Each of the 50 PRs who took our survey was registered with us. We have verified their email addresses and know who they are. Some of them are quite well known in the profession. 22 left left on-the record comments which we have quoted by name (and some of which The Guardian picked up). Still more left URLS, which we have listed. This means that it is a very transparent and high quality sample - not just anybody passing by a website who had a few minutes to spare.
So the short answer to your question is no, I’m not losing any sleep over it. I won’t be ringing up The Guardian to complain that they reported our survey.
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Like Wildfire
Once bloggers get hold of useful information, news about it tends to travel rapidly. Hugh at Blog Relations and the Angel Blog notes how quickly news about his company’s PR survey spread. He writes: I published at 11 pm GMT
What are the standards for reporting blog surveys?
Summary: Why the articles published by The Guardian and The Times on the Blog Relations PR Survey are inaccurate (IMO); what are the journalistic standards for reporting a survey; a response to the comments of Hugh Fraser, founder of Blog Relation; wh…