Social Media is becoming more important to Technical Journalists and is a core function of how the perceive their jobs according to a new survey by Fusion PR released yesterday.  Out of 9300 Journalists who were asked to fill out the Survey, 1100 responded with a completed Survey, about 12% of the total.  Here's what the completed Survey says about Journalists and Social Media:

• When asked: “Has social media impacted your stories or the way you cover news?” a plurality of 40% said “Yes” with 10% of respondents selecting “I feel as if I have a new job now.”
• 78% read blogs.
• A plurality of 49% read just 1-3 blogs and most consult blogs several times a day.
• 31% regard bloggers as credible sources.
• 35% maintain their own blog.
• 67% cite blogs in their articles.
• Search engines were the top ranked means for researching companies and trends.
• Most prefer to get information from companies or agencies via email, with relatively few rating RSS as important.
• More journalists ranked company websites as being important for article research, while podcasts ranked relatively low. The majority were neutral on blogs, Wikis and videocasts.

I'm told that Fusion PR will publish the survey results and analysis on the Fusion Forum blog (http://blog.fusionpr.com) on September 10, 2007.