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Don't call a reporter on a morning paper in the afternoon, and don't call a reporter on an afternoon paper in the morning.
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Don't call a TV assignment editor at 5:45 p.m., unless you know for a fact that Paula Jones and Bill Clinton will be in Times Square -- together -- in ten minutes.
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Don't fax a journalist -- or e-mail a journalist -- at all, unless you've been told first hand that that's how he or she wants to be reached.
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The patterns differ for magazines and for newspapers. Magazine editors are relying more on e-mail for dialog with sources; only the phone is a more popular communications tool in the magazine world. But e-mail ranks third at newspapers - behind personal contact and phones.
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The past 40 years have seen enormous changes in the media business. Television became generally profitable in the 1950s and 600 stations nationwide expanded into thousands. FM vastly expanded radio outlets in the 1960s, but did not become profitable until the 1970s. Offset printing, along with more advanced list brokerage, made small-circulation magazines cost-effective in the late 1960s; the number of magazines exploded from a few thousand (that many new titles are created every three years or so now). Some 300 dailies disappeared in the same period. Satellite and cable transmission allow anyone to create a "network" in radio or TV.
But no change has come about as fast as what we are calling "new" media - on-line services, especially on the World Wide Web.
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"Despite all the high-tech," Middleberg added, "there will never be a substitute for face-to-face communications. Personal relations skills are still paramount."
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For all the hype about on-line technology changing the way journalists do business, most journalists get story ideas the old fashioned way - by getting a pitch. To put that another way, few journalists are trolling the Internet in a relentless search for stories - unless their beat IS the Internet.
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Opening a site with a fast-loading home page, then providing a "journalists' track," is a good strategy in sites you want to serve as an entryway for the press to get company data.
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"If you use the Internet, what do you use it for?" We find that the use patterns that emerged in 1995 remain roughly unchanged. About two-thirds of the sample both years said they use the Internet for article research and reference.
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More than a third of respondents now say they or their staff goes on-line every day. That's up from 23% daily a year ago, and 16% reported two years ago.
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Only 13% of responding journalists do not have Internet access -- down from 37% a year ago.
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The Internet is not a magic bullet; almost 60% of our respondents say they get story ideas via personal contact with sources; only 2% say their best source of story ideas is the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, 85% of the respondents, or their staffs, go on-line at least monthly. Two-thirds go on-line at least once a week. The figures show explosive growth over the past two years.
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