In the past 15 years, newspapers have watched readers gradually (and then rapidly) shift their news consumption from the printed word to the digital one. What started as nearly imperceptible readership losses rapidly snowballed as the world realized it could get fresher content free online. Now, it looks as though radio and possibly
TV are also losing their audiences to the Internet.
Image Credit: Pew Research Center
A new study from the Pew Research Center finds that the number of people getting news with computers and mobile devices is rocketing, while news audience numbers for newspapers and radio are sliding. Where only 24% of respondents got their news online in 2002, a whopping 39% report doing so now. Newspaper and radio users have dropped from about 39% to 29% (newspaper) and 33% (radio) in that same period. TV is also dipping, though its viewership is still king with 55% in 2012. The Pew Research Center characterizes TV as “Increasingly vulnerable,” and points to research that shows TV news viewership dropping precipitously in the 18-29 year-old range.
Get up-to-the minute news, tuned to your interests, with text, video, and audio meshed to make an engaging experience on any device you own? Can’t imagine why online news is so popular.
Joshua Gulick
Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to
Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote
CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for
Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for
HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.
