Online News Surpass Newspapers and Radio

Two weeks ago, we reported on the decline of newspaper advertising in the United States. Last week, the Pew Research Center published further evidence for the sorry state of the newspaper industry.

In the 2012 edition of Pew’s biennial survey on news consumption, only 29 percent of the respondents claimed having read a newspaper the day before, down from 58 percent in 1994 and 39 percent in 2002.

Meanwhile, more and more Americans are turning to online sources to get their news updates. In 2012, 39 percent of the respondents had consumed online news the day before the survey, surpassing not only newspapers but also radio news.

Television remains the number one news source for Americans. 55 percent of the respondents in the 2012 survey had watched a news program on TV on the day prior to the survey.

Description

This chart shows how news consumption in the United States has changed over the past two decades.

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Do you primarily watch news online or on TV?
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Share of consumers who have used selected offline news sources to access news in the last week in the United States as of February 2026
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Number of newspaper readers in the United States in 2010 and 2014, by platform (in millions)
Reasons for reading the news vs. watching online news videos in the United States in 2013
Frequency of using newspapers as a source of news among adults in the United States as of February 2022, by age group
Share of adults who have used selected news sources to access news in the past month in the United States as of May 2026

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