According to a new Cornell University study, "conventional" media still beats bloggers to the punch on most news stories. The study found that information usually starts with mainstream news sources and then flows to blogs, while only 3.5% of news stories originate in the blogosphere. 

The study analyzes news "threads," or story life, over both the traditional news media and blogs. "Thread volume in blogs reaches its peak typically 2.5 hours after the peak thread volume in the news sources. Thread volume in news sources increases slowly but decreases quickly, while in blogs the increase is rapid and the decrease much slower," according to the authors. 

The researchers studied over 1.6 million sites, designating each as either news media or blog. While only about 20,000 of the sites were labeled news media, those sites account for approximately 30% of the documents in the study's dataset. The study then tracked each set of web sites' volumes for a particular thread. The authors found that, while news media tends to pick up a thread quickly and volume spikes rapidly, the spike ebbs quickly. Bloggers pick up the thread about 2.5 hours after the initial jump in traffic in the news media. However, while the volume also spikes rapidly, it diminishes more slowly over time. 

While the majority of phrases or threads appear first in the news media, propagate to blogs and then remain on blogs while they are discussed, some threads do start on blogs and make their way to the news media. This validates the anecdotal references to "consumer journalism" and "independent media" that dominate many current media discussions. However, from this study it appears that the days of traditional media are far from over.