Old Media, New Media Sources: The Blogosphere's Influence on Print Media News Coverage

Abstract

This paper contributes to the growing literature on how "new media" is influencing "old media" by tracking references to an extensive list of political blogs in stories run by seventeen prominent print media outlets during the last ten years. The findings presented here show that although journalists frequently use political bloggers as sources in their news coverage, they only reference certain blogs in certain ways at certain times. To be precise, journalists turn to political blogs primarily during national election campaigns and this turn is commonly in the direction of a relatively small group of interactive, liberal blogs.