FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: Where Blogs Get Their Links

Yesterday, the Daily Kos put up a fascinating bit of data collection that quantified where their site gets the preponderance of its stories.

I don’t know how representative it is of the patterns of other blogs. But it offers some intriguing clues. Here’s what they said.

Whenever we debate the future of newspapers, inevitably someone asks, “if they go out of business, where will blogs get their stories?” That’s a companion argument to “who will conduct investigative journalism”? Well, just as a wide range of journalistic enterprises are conducting investigative reporting (including online news outlets, television stations, and advocacy groups), so too will we get our news from a variety of different sources. In fact, we already do.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see where the news we discuss on this site came from the past week, from Monday, April 6, to Sunday, April 12. If we linked to a source that got its information from another site, we followed the links until we got to the original source of the reporting (“secondary” source). In other words, I wanted to categorize the original source of information for every (front page) post on the site. Here’s the results of that link inventory:

Newspapers: 102 primary, 21 secondary
Blogs: 83 primary, 19 secondary
Advocacy organizations: 77 primary, 9 secondary
Television network: 69 primary, 14 secondary
Online news organizations: 54 primary, 5 secondary
Magazines and journals: 36 primary
Political trade press: 28 primary
Research/polling: 20 primary
Wikipedia: 21 primary, 8 secondary
Educational (.edu): 15 primary
Government: 14 primary, 5 secondary
Campaigns: 13 primary
Books: 6 primary
AP and other Wire: 5 secondary
Radio: 4 primary

“Online news organizations” include web-centric publications conducting original journalism, like HuffPo, and TPM. “Political trade press” are the DC-centric political newspapers: CQ, The Hill, Roll Call, and Politico….

Read the rest here.