It has been previously argued that this competition exists, including on this blog and our annual report Trends in Newsrooms 2006 (Chapter 6: "Internet companies competing with newspapers). Jupiter Research has done the work to confirm these suspicions.

What they found arguably constitutes the principal problem facing newspapers today: if online news users go to portals which are essentially aggregates of news from other sources, how are these sources going to maintain financial stability if readers aren't actually visiting their site? 

In this sense, even the title of this posting is misleading. Youth aren't actually obtaining their news from these portals; it is these portals which are obtaining news from legitimate, traditional news sources without whom they could not exist.

Web portals have already proven that they have a hard time doing the news themselves, but it has been rumored that these companies, inundated with cash, could start buying up traditional news organizations (also, rumors this week that Microsoft is eyeing Time Warner). 

Furthermore, it's not just about news. It's about the traditional methods of financing news. For instance, young people don't pay to place classified ads in newspapers; they do it for free on Craigslist.

The reports lead analyst, Barry Parr, spoke with Poynter's Amy Gahran:

• Portals have witnessed the only increase in use by youth out of all news media
• The way younger generations get their news online will change essentially every aspect of the news production process
• Newspapers must plan their websites so that every page becomes an introduction to their paper since most readers will be directed to their sites from outside sources
  
• Local coverage is where newspapers will reign over Web portals
• Citizen journalism has the potential to play a large part in local coverage
  

The above is not really new information, but it's nice to hear it from someone who did a scientific study.  

You can read additional analysis on these subjects, especially about Web portals competing with newspapers and how this is driving newspapers to increase local coverage (Chapter 4: Regional newspapers reconnecting with their communities) which in turn could boost citJ (Chapter 3: Newspapers welcoming citizen journalists), in Trends in Newsroom 2006 which includes essays from experts in newspapers in new media.  

Sources: Poynter, Trends in Newsrooms, Business Week (Microsoft/Time Warner)