US: Part 1 Pew Research - Audiences now blend traditional and online news sources

The biennial Pew Research Center has revealed in its report that Yahoo, MSN and CNN are the three most popular web news destinations.

Traditional media brands are still favoured, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

Users gave many of the leading mainstream media websites low credibility ratings. Only 6% said the Huffington Post was very highly credible and just 13% said the same of Google News, which aggregates news from mainstream news organisations.

The report presents a picture of a steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

"For more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged," said the Pew report.

15% of Americans have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. More than a third of the owners of these devices (37%) say they get news from their phones.

The report highlights the changing news audiences, describing 13% of the US public as "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and are interested in technology and technology news.

Net newsers are generally wealthy and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

Source: Guardian.co.uk and Pew Research Center