Suggesting a mutable new media landscape ripe for the taking, 65% of U.S. consumers say they do not have a single favorite Web site for news, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
On average, consumers do claim to limit themselves to between two and five online news sources, while 21% say they routinely rely on just one site for their news and information.
Regardless
of sex, age, or socioeconomic status, the vast majority of U.S. consumers -- 92% -- now rely on multiple media channels to get their daily news fix, according to Pew. Nearly half of Americans -- 46%
-- claim to consume news from four to six media platforms on an average day, while just 7% rely on a single platform, Pew finds.
"The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a
particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone," Pew concludes in the report.
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The report -- based on telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates
International between late December and mid January among 2,259 adults -- found that consumers now prefer "grazing" the Web for news over more thorough newspaper reading.
Perhaps surprisingly,
the Web remains the third-most-popular news channel, behind local and national TV stations: 61% of readers surveyed said they got their news online on a typical day, compared with 78% from local news
channels and 71% from a national TV network such as NBC or cable channels such as CNN or Fox News.
Meanwhile, regular readers of newspapers -- either local ones or national papers such as The
New York Times -- have dropped to 50%, the survey said. Online, the survey also showed that news aggregators such as Google News and AOL were most commonly used, along with the Web sites of CNN
and the BBC.
Gone are the days of predictable consumption patterns, when the morning paper and the evening news reigned supreme. Rather, "the process Americans use to get news is based on
foraging and opportunism," according to Pew. "They seem to access news when the spirit moves them or they have a chance to check up on headlines."
Leading the fragmentation revolution, a full 33%
of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones; 28% of Web users report having customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them; while
37% of Internet users report having contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
In other words:
"People's experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news
stories in their Tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads."
In particular, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails, according to Pew.
Americans, meanwhile, sent mixed messages in the survey about how they feel in a world where news is updated constantly and they can access news all the time.
When asked the question: "Compared
with five years ago, do you think it is easier or harder to keep up with news and information today?" 55% said it is "easier," 18% said it is harder, and one-quarter of adults -- 25% -- said there is
no difference.
That's not to say that Americans don't feel overwhelmed. Fully 70% agreed with the statement: "The amount of news and information available from different sources today is
overwhelming." Specifically, 25% "completely agreed" with that statement, while 45% "mostly agreed."