This month Newswise did a study of how journalists subscribing to Newswise have used their press passes over the last 6 months to access your embargoed news.

Roughly 25% to 30% of stories posted to Newswise carry embargo restrictions, and Newswise requires journalists to log in with their press pass username and password in order to access them while the embargo is in force. Press passes are only issued to full-time, professional journalists who have provided clippings to Newswise to verify their status as a journalist. Newswise has a rigorous embargo protection policy honored by journalists and has been approved by Science Magazine to carry embargoed stories before the embargo is lifted because of our password system.

Of the 3847 Newswise subscribing journalists, 2887 (75%) have press passes. The remaining have either never requested a press pass or have not yet provided clippings. On average, we add 50-60 new press passes each month. Over the last six months, 1,627 individual journalists have used their press pass. The chart below shows how many journalists used their press passes in any given month from January to June. This chart also shows how many journalists are freelance or on staff at media outlets.

The number of embargoed stories accessed by each reporter varies across a broad range from 1 to more than 100 monthly. Roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of press pass users access between 1 and 5 embargoed stories per month. The chart below, broken down by month, shows the distribution of reporters by numbers of hits on embargoed releases.

Currently, Newswise is working on a redesign of our website. With the new design, all journalists will be required to have a username and password. Those journalists with current press passes will have password clearance to access embargoed stories. Those journalists without a current password will have limited access and only be able to view unembargoed stories unless they provide adequate credentials.