Looking At The Bright Side Of The Latest Blog Study

By Steve Rubel
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-04-14

CNET is reporting that Hostway polled 2,500 Americans on blogging. The headlines tonight and tomorrow ...

... will parrot what CNET said - that 80% of respondents support at least some censorship. I am choosing to look at the bright side. I have worked on enough PR surveys to know that the sponsoring companies typically write the questions to generate sexy, media-friendly findings. Look deeper however, and I think there's a lot to be excited about...

1. 30% of those surveyed read blogs. That's a lot, people.



2. The majority, 52% of those surveyed, said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27% did not express an opinion. Whoa!



3. A minority, 39%, said that they found blogs less credible than newspaper articles. However an additional 32% said they either did not know or had no opinion. To me, this means that there is an opening for bloggers to be respected.

Call me pollyanna, but I think there's more here than meet headlines screaming Americans Support Censoring Blogs. It will be interesting to see how the blogosphere reacts to this.

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About the Author:
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.