More Americans read news online than in the papers

Internet is viewed, more than newspapers, as primary source of news in the US. The Web thus end up third in the list of dominant news channels, after TV and radio. This emerges from a study by Pew Internet and the American Life Project.

Internet users generally access two to five sites daily to keep themselves informed. A large fraction of these online news consumers treats the news interactively. They spread it via social networks and contribute to it by commenting.

Almost two in every three respondents consults news sources in both the online and the offline environments to keep abreast of current affairs.

According to the Pew study, only 17% of Americans reads a national paper and 50% reads local papers. The largest category of paper readers was people over 50 without a mobile phone.

This is not to say that newspapers are a dying business. A great many of the online news consumers uses the sites of the major papers. The big challenge for the publishers is to convince people that access to news, online as well as offline, is worth the coin.

1 March 2010