E-Media Tidbits

linkedin.com LinkedIn lists lots of journalists -- but few from the U.S., so far.

(UPDATE DEC. 20: Tidbits reader Inger Lund pointed out that searching LinkedIn for "reporter" and "editor" yields plenty of U.S.-based news pros. That's an interesting linguistic twist. Thanks for the correction!)

I'm continuing to explore the professional networking service LinkedIn (which I mentioned earlier, and which Sree Sreenivasan covered more fully in October). It's pretty interesting, especially for someone like me who does consulting and training in addition to journalism and editing.

It occurs to me that LinkedIn could be a good networking tool for journalists. After all, we all know that this is a strongly who-knows-who business, and newsroom or freelance jobs often go to candidates with the best referrals.

So I decided to see how many journalists were listed on LinkedIn. Indeed, there appear to be plenty -- but strangely, very few of the journalists I found there are from the U.S.

Now, this might just be a reflection of my personal LinkedIn network so far. When you search LinkedIn by keyword, it gives you results from within your extended network. In my case, it found at least 500 journalists within three "degrees of separation" from me. (Oddly, so far I have only a few journalists listed among my immediate LinkedIn connections).

The vast majority of these LinkedIn journalists are from Denmark. I'd love to hear from some Danish journalists about why they all seem to be on LinkedIn. Obviously, it must be offering them some value. Other popular countries I saw listed were Norway, Italy, and Chile -- but there were many, many more. India, Singapore, New Zealand, Russia... You name it.

If you're on LinkedIn, try doing a keyword search for "journalist." I'd be curious if you're seeing similar geographic distribution in your results. This could be just some freak anomaly related to my particular network there so far.

If you're a U.S. journalist and you're not on LinkedIn, why not? Have you not heard of this professional networking service? Do you not see the point? Do you have concerns? Please comment below.

(Note: I'm blogging more about my LinkedIn explorations at The Right Conversation.)