POWER GRID – Print/Online Reporters: The Cult of the Personality

Print/Online Reporters is the second biggest category in our Power Grid next to TV Reporters, and arguably captures best the changing and often blurry landscape of today’s journalism. What is a reporter? What is a blogger? What happens when the two overlap? It’s a tricky state of affairs.

If nothing else this category gives you a good sense of what that overlap looks like. And judging by our results media “influence” has a lot to do with personality! Also, apparently with being a man since Cathy Horyn(!) is the top ranked woman here and she clocks in at #14.

Personality you say? Or just big on the Internets! Of our top five results only Bob Woodward, #4, is without a blog presence (bringing down a president has its own influential staying power!). Of our top twenty he is joined in that attribute by only three others: The New Yorker‘s Seymour Hersh, and the Times‘ John Burns, #10, and Don Van Natta, #13, all of whom do incredibly important, top notch, hard core journalism. Everyone else either has a blog to supplement their print presence, or is a blogger (a few even have super active Twitter feeds).

The lesson here? Don’t be afraid to be yourself! Branding used to be something institutions worried about, and an identity writers took on when they joined one. In the changing face of media, like it or not every person is a brand unto themselves. And according to our Power Grid familiarity breeds influence not contempt!

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