PRWeek has published the results of its latest study on the media and journalists—and bloggers are increasingly including themselves among their ranks. Just last year, only a third of bloggers considered themselves journalists; now 52% do. However, only 20% receive most of their income from blogging (but that’s up from 4% last year). Just a month ago, New York City recognized bloggers as journalists; surely the trend will only continue to rise.

Social media continues to have an increasing impact on traditional media. PRWeb reports that “91% of bloggers and 68% of online reporters “always” or “sometimes” use blogs for research, [but] only 35% of newspaper and 38% of print magazine journalists suggested the same.”

Unsurprisingly, bloggers (48%) used social networks more for research than did print journalists (newspaper—31%; magazine—27%). Twitter was even more popular, with 64% of bloggers and 36% of other online reporters using the microblogging site, while only 19% of newspaper reporters and 17% of print magazine reporters used it for research. Around 1 in 5 newspaper and print magazine journalists report using Twitter as a source, while 55% of bloggers, 42% of online media/news reporters and even 48% of TV news reporters say they’ve used Twitter as a source.

It appears that PR is on the rise in social networks, too. “43% of journalists report having being pitched through social networks compared to 31% in 2009,” 74% of PR specialists maintain that email is more effective. (Which, sadly, means we’ll all be seeing more of those “review this product/story/person that’s totally unrelated to your blog” emails.) However, that opinion might change soon:

In both the US and Canada, pitches through a social network resulted in coverage approximately 70% of the time. In contrast, the standard pitch to a US or Canadian journalist rarely leads to coverage, with 66% pegging the success rate at 0-20%.

The survey was given to “1,568 traditional and non-traditional media and, for the first time, 1,670 PR practitioners,” PRWeek reports.

(Yes, the press release is dated today, but I think this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, because . . . it’s just not funny. Then again, neither are lots of other attempted April Fool’s jokes [vowel outage? srsly?].)

What do you think? Are you a blogger who considers himself/herself a journalist?

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