Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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News Habits & Media

fact sheet
Pew Research Center photo illustration.

Local News Fact Sheet

The landscape of local news in the U.S. has changed significantly in recent decades as Americans have been turning away from print and television and toward digital media. In 2025, 21% of Americans say they follow local news very closely, down from 37% in 2016.

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    How Blogs, Twitter and Mainstream Media Have Handled the Trayvon Martin Case

    It took several weeks after the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin before the story exploded in the media. A new PEJ report reveals how social and mainstream media platforms focused on different elements of the controversy and how ideology influenced coverage on the cable and radio talk shows.

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    Trayvon Martin Killing Is Public’s Top News Story

    Overview The growing controversy over the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida was the public’s top story last week, though African Americans express far greater interest in news about the killing than do whites. Overall, a quarter of Americans (25%) say they followed news about the African American teenager killed by a community […]

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    Rising Fuel Prices Top Story for Public

    Overview Rising fuel prices topped the public’s news interest last week as the average cost of gasoline neared $4.00 a gallon. About a quarter (26%) say they followed news about rising gas and oil prices more closely than any other story, according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted March 15-18 among 1,009 […]

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    The State of the News Media 2012: An Annual Report on American Journalism

    New research released in this report finds that mobile devices are adding to people’s news consumption, strengthening the lure of traditional news brands and providing a boost to long-form journalism. Eight in ten who get news on smartphones or tablets, for instance, get news on conventional computers as well. People are taking advantage, in other words, of having easier access to news throughout the day – in their pocket, on their desks and in their laps.

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    What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News

    Perhaps no topic in technology attracted more attention in 2011 than the rise of social media and its potential impact on news. “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next,” we wrote in a May 2011 report analyzing online news behavior called Navigating News Online.

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    How Community News is Faring

    In 2011, the landscape of community news websites reached a new level of maturity. Some seed grants ran out, there were more startups, some highly publicized closures and a clearer sense of what is needed to succeed.

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    Year in the News 2011

    The faltering U.S. economy was the No. 1 story in the American news media in 2011, with coverage increasing substantially from a year earlier when economic unease helped alter the political landscape in the midterm elections, according to The Year in the News 2011, a new report conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

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    Newspapers: Building Digital Revenues Proves Painfully Slow

    The newspaper industry enters 2012 neither dying nor assured of a stable future. The industry has rallied around a story about itself – that year-by year it is developing new digital products and new revenue streams to transition from dependence on print advertising. In 2011, that traditional advertising pool declined for a sixth consecutive year. The website of the Gannett Company, emphasizing those digital initiatives, now intentionally has no mention of newspapers on its home page.

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    Digital: News Gains Audience but Loses Ground in Chase for Revenue

    Two numbers symbolize the intensifying challenge and opportunity the digital world poses for the news industry: In 2011, social media giant Facebook grew to 133 million active users from 117 million in the U.S.1 And in the final months of the year, tablet ownership in the U.S. nearly doubled, to 18% of Americans.

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Pew Research Center illustration for America's News Influencers report; photos via Getty Images

America’s News Influencers

This study explores the makeup of the social media news influencer universe, including who they are, what content they create and who their audiences are.

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