Business Journalists Embrace the Net

Two thirds of Britain's top business and financial journalists (64%) can access the world-wide web at work and a quarter can do so at home.

Three in five (61%) are accessible by Internet E-mail at their place of work. But while they find the WWW helpful for their work, they are less keen on receiving press releases by E-Mail.

A third have accessed the web sites of companies they have written about and 54% would find it 'very' or 'fairly helpful' for the companies they write about to have a web site carrying news and other information.

In particular they would like to see companies' financial reports and current press stories.

However, asked which of a list of four ways they would prefer to receive press releases, Internet E-mail comes a poor fourth at 18%. Top came fax to work (79%) followed by 'hand delivered by courier' (64%) and 'first class post' (43%).

Technical details

The questions were asked on MORI's, annual survey of Britain's leading Business and Financial Journalists. Twenty-eight journalists - City and Business Editors or equivalent - were interviewed face-to-face between November 12 1996 and January 28 1997.