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We couldn't pass up this commentary from Modern Marketing. Pass it along to someone whenever they inquire about participating in social media and ask, "How do you find the time?"

My normal answer is that they do less of other stuff - including TV. But now I've got a much better answer thanks to Clay Shirky including this gem: "If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought.

I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought. And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.

This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation."

A Wikipedia a weekend, spent watching ads.

The Associated Press Managing Editors released their Online Journalism Credibility Study Tuesday in conjunction with the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

According to the AP, "The study was designed to help gauge the priorities and practices newspapers should be establishing as they increasingly blend their print and Web operations."

One of the noteworthy news nuggets: "Some 70% of editors surveyed said requiring commenters to disclose their identities would support good journalism, while only 45% of the public did. Similarly, 58% of editors said letting journalists join online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism, but only 36% of the public agreed."

Romenesko has the link to the full report.

Somehow, amid all of the hubub of the last few days, we haven't yet had a chance to review PRWeek's 2008 Media Survey. Well, we still haven't looked over all of it, but we will present you with some interesting nuggets of information. You can download the full report here.

On Social Media:
Of those surveyed, 25.5% say they have a profile on MySpace, 29% are on Facebook, and 32.3% are on LinkedIn. While only 8.4% say they "always" use blogs for research, more than 36.5% say they use them "sometimes." In addition, 57.7% report using blogs to measure sentiment, 38.7% for finding subjects, and 29.5% for searching industry experts.

On the changing business:
More than two-thirds (67.3%) of respondents from newspapers anticipate print circulation declines and increased focus on the Web at their publications over the next three years, while 41.1% expect a shift in staffing from print to online. Additionally, 39.7% of print magazine journalists expect circulation declines and Web growth and 24.2% a shift in staff to online activities. Yet 38.2% of newspaper staffers expect a reduction in staff over the next three years, while only 9.4% of magazine journalists do.

Finally, a choice quote from Huffington Post columnist, and mediabistro alum Rachel Sklar:

My whole life has changed in terms of how I do things. You used to write the words and e-mail them in a story. Now it's writing it, hyperlinking it, picking an image, framing it, designing it within the parameters of the program you have, and determining if it looks OK. I'm also an editor - it's a self-generating thing where I decide what I cover.

There you have it folks. Almost all journalists are all slowly turning into web content producers. The more you can help them in that process, the better off you are.

AdweekMedia, the folks behind Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek have put out their annual Hot List, which honors, "the publications and creative talents that keep consumers coming back to the newsstands." Like the good bloggers we are, we adhered to today's embargo after receiving a copy of the list on Friday.

The Economist jumped to #1 on this year's list, which is judged by a variety of metrics, including, "ad page and revenue gains; performance within a magazine's competitive category; circulation gains; interviews with media buyers and consultants, and AdweekMedia's own editorial judgment." In addition, Paul Rossi and editor John Micklethwait took home the "Executive Team of the Year" award.

People.com won "Magazine Website of the Year," as traffic increased 48% in 2007 to 6.3 million monthly unique users.

Surprisingly, all publications in the top 10 had advertising revenue gains of at least 10% in 2007.

Full rankings after the jump.

continued...

Former Business 2.0 writer Erick Schonfeld dropped a long weekend post yesterday on his first six months blogging with Michael Arrington at TechCrunch.

As we've thought, it seems those guys don't sleep much. According to Schonfeld, "Michael literally never sleeps. It is really unhealthy."

A PR related takeaway, amongst Erick's other points:

Our philosophy is that it is better to get 70 percent of a story up fast and get the basic facts right than to wait another hour (or a day) to get the remaining 30 percent. We can always update the post or do another one as new information comes in. More often than not, putting up partial information is what leads us to the truth - a source contacts us with more details or adds them directly into comments.

This could be scary news, especially if you're client is involved in a "70% post." On the other hand it also gives you an opportunity to correct the situation in a much more direct way than in other publications.

I must admit, we sometimes use this tactic at PRNewser, if we think we are "almost there" with a post. It never fails that once the post is up, you'll hear from someone with more info.

What's your take?

BusinessWeek has launched an arcade. Yes, you are reading that right. The arcade is, "a collection of some of the Web's best free, independently produced games."

FishbowlNY caught up with BusinessWeek.com editor John Byrne who said:

The buzz has been great. We were picked up by the leading games blogs and newswires -- and mainstream press sources such as Portfolio and CBS.com -- which were pretty much all supportive of the venture. Most gratifyingly, we weren't just praised for the launch of the feature, but for the smart curation of the Arcade as a whole.

Buzzy? Yes. Happy readers? Jury still out. BusinessWeek Innovation Channel Helen Waters has already responded to some negative comments (scroll down) on the site.

(image: clipart.com)

The Project of Excellence in Journalism (found online at Journalism.org) today released their State of News Media in 2008 report, an in depth look at all things news media.

Highlights from the report:

News is shifting from being a product - today's newspaper, Web site or newscast - to becoming a service - how can you help me, even empower me?

A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.

The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among "citizen" sites and blogs.

Increasingly, the newsroom is perceived as the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry.

The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden.

Madison Avenue, rather than pushing change, appears to be having trouble keeping up with it.

Here's something PRNewser, along with Vasanth Sridharan at Alley Insider finds depressing: 81% of national broadcast journalists, 80% of local broadcast journalists, 63% of local print journalists, and 53% of national print journalists still say that their traditional medium - not the Web - is the priority at their companies.

A bright spot? Cable: Analysts projected operating profits to rise 20% in 2007. Fox News was expected to see the biggest jump (30%), with MSNBC close behind (28%) and CNN to maintain the same growth rate as in 2006 (10%). And 2008 could be even better. So far, the campaign for president has proven a boon for cable news, with debates and election nights setting records in ratings.

This is more Fishbowl than PRNewser though it may warrant a bit of damage control on the part of Dow Jones.

A Poynter Forum post (via Jossip) from Patricia Kranz, Deputy Sunday Business Editor of The New York Times points out that site run by the Hindustan Times (HT) is lifting full stories without credit or hyperlinks.

The site is HT Media's LiveMint, the new national business paper of India.

Check out the description of LiveMint on HT's About Us page:

HT Media has also launched a national business newspaper, Mint, with an exclusive agreement with Wall Street Journal to publish Journal branded news and information in India.

Here's the example cited in Poynter, Janet Rae-Dupree's "Improv Wisdom" story. Compare it to the original in the Times from March 1. No link, no credit, bad copyright situation.

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The publisher of PC magazine, the 1Up video-game network of sites and producer of the popular Digital Life consumer tech show has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to Bloomberg, it's not game over: "Ziff Davis Media said it plans to emerge from bankruptcy protection this summer. [CEO Jason] Young said in an interview that advertising pages at the company's technology magazines have decreased dramatically since a leveraged buyout by Willis Stein in April 2000."

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It's official, folks. NBC Universal will be shutting down iVillage, currently called In The Loop With iVillage. A staffer told Jossip, "I'm there for the next month. The show got cancelled. Our last day is March 28th. I am dusting off my resume."

NBC paid $600 million for the website, but failed to achieve successul integration with a nationally syndicated daytime show.