Who are you going to trust? Media mavens weigh in

Where do you get your information, and what information sources do you trust? The Edelman PR firm has just released its 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveys global opinion leaders. President and CEO Richard Edelman says the two information sources that “continue to lead in most markets are financial analyst reports and business media.” Sources that have faded over time, he says, are radio, television, and newspapers, a decline that he says is probably due to the rise of opinion journalism and to staff reductions that have led to a real or perceived reduced quality of product.

He goes on to cite a rise in social media, but adds that a friend or peer–a person such as yourself–has diminished substantially as a credible source of information, and people are seeking out experts. “Social networks still matter hugely,” he says. “Just don’t rely on them to tell your story solely.” He adds, “It’s a multiple source world folks. It’s a mosaic. It’s not any single way of telling a story.”

Tom Foremski reviewed the report and writes that the decline in trust in information from peers and “people like me” was particularly striking. That, he says, is bad news for PR agencies, which have made social media the “point of the spear” for bringing in new business, and for the “social media experts” trying to convince companies to buy their services. It’s also bad news, he says, for citizen journalism and “traditional media outlets trying to pad out their coverage with local bloggers.”

What might a decline in the trustworthiness of social media mean for more traditional media? Jeff DeBalko, president and chief Internet officer of the Reed Business Information Business Media Division (parent company of EDN and Test & Measurement World), has a post up at MIN that addresses the future of traditional media. He doesn’t comment on the Edelman study, but he does describe conventional wisdom that he says is flat-out wrong. For example, “print is dead.” In fact, he writes, “I predict that coming our of this recession, we will see a reinvestment in leading print titles, including trim size, paper quality, design, and circ quality reversing many of the cost-cutting moves of the recent past.” One drawback for print, he says, is that print advertising doesn’t provide the click-counting metrics of on-line advertising. To counter that, he says, publishers should invest in brand-effectiveness research to give their advertisers actionable data.

Another point of conventional wisdom DeBalko disputes: “trusted content no longer matters.” He writes, “I am always fascinated that when reading breaking news in my Twitter feed, I usually forget who was first but always remember who had the best inside knowledge, analysis, and insight. That is almost always those who have built long-standing relationships in the industry with their audience and the companies they cover. The answer to competing with the upstarts and to building a credible paid content business is based in leveraging these relationships and offering analysis and insight built on many years of ‘respecting the past but understanding the future.’”

That nicely mirrors Edelman’s citing of the importance of expertise in complementing a social-networking world.