☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing updates you on what’s happened and what’s coming in the news and information world – and what our data tells us about it. Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Top story: Twitter is removing headlines and other text from news links on the platform
- New from Pew Research Center: Key facts about radio listeners and the radio industry in the U.S.
- Under the radar: Former Vice journalists launch tech site 404 Media
- Looking ahead: Cox Media Group is launching a hyperlocal streaming service
- Chart of the week: Differences in how U.S. journalists and the public use Twitter for news
🔥 Top story
On Monday, Elon Musk announced that Twitter, recently renamed as X, is planning to remove headlines and other text from links to news articles that users post on the platform. Instead, the links will now only show an article’s main image, limiting the user’s ability to see content without clicking the link.
In a 2021 Center survey, about seven-in-ten Twitter users in the U.S. (69%) said they got news or news headlines on the platform.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center analysis examines key facts about radio listeners and the radio industry in the U.S. for National Radio Day, celebrated Aug. 20.
Key findings include:
- About eight-in-ten Americans ages 12 and older (82%) listen to terrestrial radio in a given week, according to Nielsen Media Research data. Weekly terrestrial radio listenership in the U.S. has remained relatively stable in the last two years after dipping slightly in 2020.
- Nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) sometimes or often get news from radio, our summer 2022 survey found. In the same survey, just 7% of U.S. adults said they prefer radio to other platforms for getting news.
- One-in-five U.S. adults said in a 2018 survey that they often get local news from radio stations. That was below the share of U.S. adults who say they often get local news from TV stations (38%) but comparable to the share who often get local news from daily newspapers (17%).
🕵️ Under the radar
- Former Vice journalists launch tech publication 404 Media
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls for Meta to reverse news ban amid Canada wildfires
- How social media creators are becoming popular news sources for young adults
- India blocks independent news outlet The Kashmir Walla
- How the 2023 Pulitzer Prizes highlight successes of local journalism
- Prominent media figures form new research group to influence internet policy in support of an independent press
📅 Looking ahead
This week, Cox Media Group launched Neighborhood TV, a free streaming service that focuses on hyper-local news, in dozens of neighborhoods in Atlanta and Charlotte. CMG plans to expand to Orlando later this year and eventually reach 5,000 neighborhoods nationwide.
Nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) said in a 2018 Center survey that their local news media mostly does not cover the area where they live, but rather another area such as a nearby city.
📊 Chart of the week
This week, as Twitter updates how it handles headlines, we highlight a noticeable gap between the shares of U.S. journalists and the American public who use Twitter for news.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, and copy edited by David Kent.
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