No tick-box for me in the Online Journalism Blog survey

 by Martin Belam, 7 January 2008

The Online Journalism Blog is running a quick survey to try and get some figures on who makes up their audience. I couldn't help but feel a bit alienated by the options in the first question: "Which of the following describes the area(s) in which you work:"

OJB survey

The division of all of OJB's readers into journalist (3 types), news management (3 types), educator (2 types), student (2 types) and technical (you all look the same to me) didn't actually give me a box to tick. Just a plain 'Other' would have done, although you'd think a blog about the practice of journalism in the online media might also have stretched to 'Blogger' as a category?

I was forced to tick 'technical', which will, I should imagine, have any ex-colleagues who've ever looked at my code rolling in the aisles.

It may just be an oversight when the survey was put together though. The OJB predictions for the results of the first question includes the miscellaneous category which I myself would fall into.

"I think 20% of readers will be journalists, 20% management, 5% technical, 10% other, 25% educators and 20% students"

I also can't help wondering for how many more years dividing journalists into print, broadcast and online will continue to make sense - I hope when they get their figures the OJB will reveal how many people ticked two or more of those three 'journalist' boxes.

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