Two-thirds of journalists visit online newsrooms at least once a week, with only five per cent never visiting, says the study of 248 journalists by video content provider TheNewsMarket. Eight-five per cent of journalists say they find online newsrooms useful and 60 per cent view them as satisfactory.
However, despite being used frequently, the survey suggests many online newsrooms still fail in certain areas, and just under 15 per cent of journalists find them unsatisfactory.
According to the survey, 45 per cent find the lack of useful material on the newsrooms very frustrating, while over half get frustrated if they cannot download high resolution content.
In addition, 41 per cent want clearer rights information about using content hosted on online newsrooms.
Elsewhere, the survey says journalists consider images to be the most important type of content available in an online newsroom. Asked to rate its usefulness out of five, with five being the most useful, the average score given for images was 4.29.
Second on the list was video, with an average score of 4.07 – ahead of press releases (3.76). The average score for fact sheets was 3.65, followed by infographics (3.39) and executive biogs (2.37).
The report says: "If multimedia material is not offered to supplement press releases, brands are at risk of discouraging over half of media targets from publishing their story, or even being interested in their content and returning to them as a source long term."
According to the survey, 62 per cent of journalists value receiving alerts about content updated in an online newsroom by email, trumping Twitter (14 per cent) and RSS feeds (17 per cent) by some margin.
Respondents were drawn largely from the US and Europe (both 38 per cent).
The survey is included in a new report by TheNewsMarket, The Digital Revolution - Shaping The Way Journalists Consume Content.
