According to a new poll by Zogby, 56% of American adults said their favourite source for news was the internet, while only 21% said television, 10% said newspapers and 10% said radio.
Interestingly, the poll also asked the respondents which sources they felt would be the most important for news in five years time. Some 84% said they expect the internet to be the main source of news, with 13% saying TV and just 0.5% saying newspapers.
In the same poll, 10% of respondents said they see Facebook as an important source for news, suggesting that there are many people who access social networking sites to look for news stories that interest them. In addition, four-out-of-five Americans who had tried Twitter, said they see it as an important source of news.
TV and newspaper brands are still fairing well in the public consciousness once they start to provide an online platform for their news. Almost half of the respondents said the websites owned by national newspapers were an important source of news, while 43% said the same of TV channels’ websites. This suggests that members of the public are not turning their backs on traditional news providers, they would just prefer to read news online, when and where they feel like reading it.
