Americans’ Changing Relationship With Local News
More Americans now prefer to get local news online, while fewer turn to TV or print. And most say local news outlets are important to their community.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
More Americans now prefer to get local news online, while fewer turn to TV or print. And most say local news outlets are important to their community.
Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year, including one-in-five who report listening at least a few times a week. Most podcast listeners say this experience includes hearing news, which they largely expect to be mostly accurate. Large shares of listeners say they turn to podcasts for entertainment, learning or having something to listen to while doing something else.
About half of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” and this use is spread out across a number of different sites. Facebook stands out as a regular source of news for about a third of Americans.
Nonprofit news reporters now account for 20% of the nation’s total statehouse press corps, up from 6% eight years ago.
Fully 70% of U.S. adult Twitter news consumers say they have used Twitter to follow live news events, up from 59% who said this in 2015.
More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes.”
Americans inhabited different information environments, with wide gaps in how they viewed the election and COVID-19.
U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
Getting news from social media is an increasingly common experience; nearly three-in-ten U.S. adults do so often.
Older Americans, black adults and those with a high school education or less show considerably more interest in local news than their counterparts.
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