• by Erik Sass , March 1, 2010

A new survey by the Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that the Internet has surpassed newspapers and radio as a news source, but still lags behind local and national TV news in terms of popularity.

Pew and PEJ surveyed 2,259 people 18 and older from December 28, 2009 to January 19, 2010.

The good news for news outlets generally is that the majority of Americans tend to draw on more than one source of news, with 92% getting information from multiple sources.

This includes a large proportion (59% of the total) who get information from both online and offline news sources. Forty-six percent said they use four to six different media on a typical day. Within these figures, however, some outlets clearly fare better than others.

Seventy-eight percent of all those surveyed say they get news from a local TV station, while 73% say they go to national news networks such as CBS, CNN, or Fox News. The Internet comes next, with 61% of respondents saying they go online for news. A rung below that are radio news and the local newspaper, at 54% and 50%, respectively. National newspapers like USA Today or The New York Times trailed at just 17%.

Within the group that goes online for news, 37% said that they have commented on news reports or used social media applications like Facebook or Twitter to share news with others online. However, 65% said they don't favor any one particular site for news, reflecting the dynamic, varying nature of online news consumption.

On the technology front, the Pew-PEJ survey found that 37% of survey respondents who own cell phones use the mobile devices to access the Internet, while 26% of all American adults get news on their phones. The number rises among younger groups, with 43% of the under-50 set getting mobile news, versus just 15% of the over-50 set.