Daring to Research the Obvious

In grad school, we often joked after reading a pile of studies for class:

"In mass comm,
we dare research the obvious."

So I'm looking at the latest issue of Newspaper Research Journal (yes, that's an actual academic journal and, yes, I'm even on the editorial board) and I see a couple of studies that support our grad school hypothesis.  Here's are the titles:

Younger Journalists More Likely to Use Social Media
and
Traditional Reporting More Credible Than Citizen News

I'm sure these are fine pieces of research, and I agree it's important to establish these kinds of findings before moving on to more interesting extensions of the work. That said, younger journalists more likely to use social media? Ya think?

There is some interesting stuff in this issue. One study finds editors most likely to use social media just to post story links (fail), and another looks at preferences for videos versus slideshows. So don't think I'm knocking NRJ, especially as my name is one of 6 billion listed on the Editorial Board.