• by Erik Sass , July 27, 2011

Americans are news junkies, and online is the best place to get their fix, judging by the results of a new survey of 726 U.S. adults by Ongo, which operates a personal news aggregation service. The survey also revealed that many Americans regularly visit multiple online news sources.

Overall, 56% of respondents to the Ongo survey said they go online once or twice a day for news, with approximately one-third going online three or more times per day. Thirty-four percent said they go to two different news sites every day, 26% go to three different sites daily, and 24% go to four or more different sites daily.

Online news also captures a significant amount of time spent online, with 37% of Americans saying they spend 15-30 minutes reading online news every day, 26% saying they spend somewhere between 31 minutes and one hour, and 21% of those surveyed saying they spend no more than 15 minutes per day reading the news online.

According to separate figures released by comScore in January 2011, the average American spent about 32 hours per month on the Internet in 2010.

Combining the Ongo and comScore figures, it would appear that online news consumption takes up about half the time spent online by the average American. Focusing on the U.S. online population, average users spend about 13-14 hours per week or approximately 56 hours per month online. Reading news would appear to take up about a quarter of that time.

Returning to the Ongo results, Americans ranked national news first, with 77% of respondents saying they considered it important. World news came next, with 75% of respondents saying they considered it important, and local news third at 73%. Health news was selected by 50%, and politics by 49%.