CHART OF THE DAY….The latest Pew poll shows that this year, for the first time, more people say they get “most” of their national and international news from the internet than from newspapers. Obviously this is slightly misleading, since internet largely means newspaper web sites, but it’s still sort of a bellwether statistic.
My question: what happened this year? For the past three years the number of people who got their news mostly from the internet stayed (surprisingly) pretty level at a little over 20%. Then, suddenly, this year, it skyrocketed to 40%. Is this solely because of the presidential election, which became an internet phenomenon? Maybe, although the election came in at a weak #4 in the top news stories of 2008, so that doesn’t seem like enough to account for it. In any case, the bulk of the switch appears to been among the young:
For young people [] the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).
The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently.
So among young people, TV has gone from a 68-34 winner in 2007 to a 59-59 tie in 2008. That’s a huge change in only 12 months.
