Market Research

News Industry Statistics

What are the latest news industry statistics? Here are some stats on news consumption that may surprise you.

The rise of the internet as a news platform changed the news industry forever.

Add social media and mobile devices to the equation, and you're looking at a total transformation of the news industry as we know it.

So what's going on in the news industry? If you're looking for news industry statistics and trends, you'll enjoy these news consumption statistics:

Recent News Consumption Statistics

• The overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, including national TV, local TV, the internet, local newspapers, radio and national newspapers.
• Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day.
• Six in ten Americans (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day, and the internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news.
• While online, most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news. Some 21% say they routinely rely on just one site for their news and information.
• News is more portable than ever. In fact, 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• People enjoy personalizing their news. According to Pew, 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Citizen journalism is alive and well. 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter
• News has gone viral. For instance, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails.
• The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).
• Some 72% of American news consumers say they follow the news because they enjoy talking with others about what is happening in the world and 69% say keeping up with the news is a social or civic obligation.

Please not that these statistics come from Pew Research and were initially published in March 2010.

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