BOTTOM LINE: With apologies to Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks who still believes newspapers should be the only legitimate source for news, the prestigious Pew Research Center has issued an enlightening report. Pew says more folks are looking to the Internet for their news rather than newspapers. To top it off, the far and away leading news source is television. 01-09-2009/1-13
Internet Overtakes Newspapers As News Outlet The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news. Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%. For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%). The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently. This mirrors a trend seen earlier this year in campaign news consumption. The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults, finds there has been little change in the individual TV news outlets that people rely on for national and international news. Nearly a quarter of the public (23%) says they get most of their news from CNN, while 17% cite Fox News; smaller shares mention other cable and broadcast outlets.
FEEDBACK (01-13-2009): "This may be true but I bet most of the web sites the online users are accessing for news are maintained by traditional newspaper companies. I still think these companies are the only ones with the resources to deliver the mix of breaking news, local government coverage, investigative journalism and national and international news that we are used to in this country. "So I really do not see the companies going out of business just shelving or scaling back their printed product. "The challenge of course is finding ways to make enough money online to support their large news gathering machines and then to become flexible enough to tweak their online and print products to line up with what consumers want while still providing their watchdog function. "Who knows maybe in the future we will have niche news-gathering companies that grow out of the newspapers. You already have local and national economic news sites growing out of products like KC Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal. "Next you might see a publication like The Star be broken up into smaller news entities that have sites dedicated exclusively to local government or entertainment or lifestyle news rather than one paper trying to cover it all. This actually may be a very exciting time for new online news start-ups that go beyond blogging and into actual community coverage." ---BJ
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