On Friday I had quite a bit of fun with Churnalism.com, a new site from the Media Standards Trust which allows you to test how much of a particular press release has been reproduced verbatim by media outlets.

The site has an API, which got me thinking whether you might be able to ‘mash’ it with an RSS feed from Google News to check particular types of articles – and what ‘signals’ you might use to choose those articles.

I started with that classic PR trick: the survey. A search on Google News for “a survey * found” (the * is a wildcard, meaning it can be anything) brings some interesting results to start investigating.

Jon Bounds added a favourite of his: “hailed a success”.

And then it continued:

• “Research commissioned by”
• “A spokesperson said”
• “Can increase your risk of” and “Can reduce your risk of”

On Twitter, Andy Williams added the use of taxonomies of consumers – although it was difficult to pin that down to a phrase. He also added “independent researchers”

Contributors to the MySociety mailing list added:

• “Proud to announce”
• “Today launches”
• “Revolutionary new”
• “It was revealed today” (Andy Mabbett)
• “According to research”, “research published today” and “according to a new report”

And of course there is “A press release said”.

Signal – or sign?

The idea kicked off a discussion on Twitter on whether certain phrases were signals of churnalism, or just journalistic cliches. The answer, of course, is both.

By brainstorming for ‘signals’ I wasn’t arguing that any material using these phrases would be guilty of churnalism – or even the majority – just that they might be represent one way of narrowing your sample. Once you have a feed of stories containing “Revolutionary new” you can then use the API to test what proportion of those articles are identical to the text in a press release – or another news outlet.

The signal determines the sample, the API calculates the results.

Indeed, there’s an interesting research project to be done – perhaps using the Churnalism API – on whether the phrases above are more likely to contain passages copied wholesale from press releases, than a general feed of stories from Google News.

(Another research project might involve looking at press releases to identify common phrases used by press officers that might be used by the API)

You may have another opinion of course – or other phrases you might suggest?

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In January I made the following presentation to the Association for Journalism Education, talking about how digital technologies can be used to facilitate research. Let me know if you have had any similar experiences with using digital technologies in research yourself.

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Last week I interviewed Mike Hill, Deputy Editor of the Lancashire Evening Post, for an article on changing tools and approaches in local newsrooms (due to appear on Journalism.co.uk). Mike has some interesting plans on using surveys beyond the simple reader poll (since reported here), and experiences of the weaknesses of geotagging, among other things. The interview can be heard here - it’s around 10 minutes.

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Two weeks ago I conducted a mini-survey of readers. For those who responded, thank you very much – for those who tried to but couldn’t because it was closed, apologies (Surveymonkey’s free version only allows 100 responses and it reached that point within two days). Here are the results:

Employment

• By far the biggest category, 47% of readers are online journalists. 29% described themselves as print journalists, and 6% broadcast, but as respondents could fill in more than one category, I’m guessing the majority of online journalists write for print or broadcast as well.
• 26% work in management (19% editorial, 5% technical, 2% commercial/advertising – there may be some in more than one category)
• 19% are journalism educators; 7% educators in other areas (again, potential for overlap)
• 12% are journalism students; 11% other students (some may be dual-honours students ticking both)
• 7% technical. If anyone can post in the comments what that means for you (web designer? Developer?), that would be great.

Even at the top level, these figures add up to 111%, so clearly there are some educators, students and management who work as journalists, and vice-versa. My own feeling that readership would be pretty evenly distributed between journalists, management educators and students goes out the window.

Country

Surveymonkey doesn’t summarise these results, so OJB virtual intern Wendy Withers very helpfully (and quickly!) compiled the following:

• 31% UK
• 28% USA
• 7% Portugal
• 6% Canada
• 4% Spain
• Other readers in Brazil, Switzerland, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Peru, Qatar, and South Korea.

This seems to support the importance of viral distribution and relationships with other bloggers in blogging. Amazingly, despite my predictions, no Australian or Ukrainian respondents.

RSS Readers

• 51% use Google Reader
• 10% Bloglines
• 27% another RSS reader
• and 18% don’t use one

My 50% non-users prediction was clearly out of touch. And a surprisingly low turnout for Bloglines. I should have asked whether people read blog entries in the RSS reader only, or click through to the blog. Do you?

How did you come across OJB?

• 48% came from another blog post
• 9% search
• 6% blogroll
• 5% for either Facebook or an article link
• 18% can’t remember

Again, this clearly highlights the importance of other blogs in generating traffic. In hindsight it would have been worth asking whether people came from comments I’ve posted.  The role of Facebook is worth noting too.

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