By Greg Jarboe

You could have knocked me over with a feather last week after I read the headline, "Press Releases Are More Popular Than Reported News, Says Study." This InformationWeek story by Thomas Claburn reported that press releases have leapfrogged over trade publications to become the top news source of knowledge workers.

According to a report from Outsell, a market research firm, there has been an "types." The report is based on surveys of 5,740 knowledge workers taken from November 2005 to February 2006.

In the InformationWeek article, Roger Strouse, Outsell Vice President and Lead Analyst, said, "The real headliner in this is that the most used content type among knowledge workers for business purposes has switched to press releases."

From September 2004 to January 2005, only 10% of knowledge workers in the corporate sector used press releases as news sources, compared to 35% who used trade publications. That changed dramatically from November 2005 to February 2006, when 37% of knowledge workers were using press releases as news sources, compared to 26% who used trade publications.

Strouse offered several possible explanations for the rising popularity of press releases. "It may be that press releases are easier for people to get their hands on," he told InformationWeek. "It may be that press releases are shorter and pithier."

While I'm not surprised that knowledge workers are reading press releases, I'm also painfully aware of a second reason why they have now passed trade publications to become the top news source.

As Patrick Phillips, the Editor and Founder of I Want Media, has documented, media companies in the U.S. have cut nearly 72,000 jobs since June 2000.A disproportionate percentage of these media layoffs have come from trade publications.

This is one of the surprising reasons why you can find press releases in the results when you conduct a search on Google News or Yahoo News. Press releases are filling the vacuum for information about product launches and industry news that was created when many reporters and editors in the trade press were laid off.

To its credit, InformationWeek - a trade publication - reported this story without blinking. Claburn also disclosed that InformationWeek is owned by United Business Media plc, which also happens to own PR Newswire, a distributor of press releases.

I was the director of corporate communications at Ziff-Davis from 1991 to 1998, so the irony of all this wasn't lost on me.

Greg Jarboe is a partner in Newsforce. He is also the president of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency.