Online News More Dominant Than Print, Threatening TV: Pew Study

Online News Threatening TV Domination
In a March 6, 2012 photo provided by Fox News, Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier are seated at the anchor desk at the Fox New York Studios. Four years ago, Megyn Kelly roved the Democratic and Republican convention floors as a reporter for Fox News Channel. Starting Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, in Tampa, Fla., she'll be in Fox's booth as co-anchor with Bret Baier for the 2012 meetings. (AP Photo/Fox News, Alex Kroke)
In a March 6, 2012 photo provided by Fox News, Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier are seated at the anchor desk at the Fox New York Studios. Four years ago, Megyn Kelly roved the Democratic and Republican convention floors as a reporter for Fox News Channel. Starting Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, in Tampa, Fla., she'll be in Fox's booth as co-anchor with Bret Baier for the 2012 meetings. (AP Photo/Fox News, Alex Kroke)

The inevitable dominance of online media is quickly becoming a reality, a new Pew survey showed on Thursday.

The organization's biennal study of American news consumption was as stark a piece of evidence of the decline of newspapers as media-watchers are likely to find. Pew reported that more people now consume their news online than through newspapers or radio. 39 percent of respondents reported having read news online the previous day, as opposed to 23 percent who said they read a print newspaper. That's down from 47 percent who read newspapers in 2000. In addition, the number of people who saw news on a social networking site jumped from 9 to 19 percent in just two years.

Television was still the dominant medium in the survey, with 55 percent of Americans reporting having watched the news. But Pew pointed out that the TV audience is aging, with the percentage of 18-to-29-year-olds watching tumbling 15 points in the last six years.

The study also showed that CNN's audience has dropped substantially in the last four years; that Rachel Maddow's audience was the most-informed out of all of the audiences quizzed on current events; and that Fox News had the least-informed cable news audience in the country.

To read the full survey, click here.

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