NEW YORK: A new Gallup poll released today reveals a halt in the steady decline of Americans who rely on newspapers for most of their news gathering, with local TV news still holding at #1.
Despite all of the publicity about people fleeing to the Web for their daily news diet, the Gallup survey found that twice as many still rely on newspapers: 44% daily vs. 22% daily for Internet use.
"The rapid growth in the Internet news audience may have slowed in the last two years, and cable news viewership has declined," Gallup reports.
An additional 13% say they rely on newspapers "several times a week," meaning 57% use the papers a lot.
Behind local news and newspapers come the network news at 35% daily and cable news at 34%, and public television at 28%. Radio talk shows fall far behind at 20%.
Daily newspaper use had stood at 47% in 2002, falling off to 44% in 2004 -- but showing no further declines since.
"Between 2002 and 2004, the number of daily Internet news consumers increased by five percentage points (from 15% to 20%); but in the most recent two years it increased by only two points (from 20% to 22%)," Gallup relates. Radio talk show used has gone down from 22% in 2002 to 20% now.
Gallup reports: "Only 7% of Americans say they read a national newspaper (such as USA Today or The New York Times) every day. An additional 6% read these several times a week. These figures haven't changed much over the past several years. It's possible that the reach of these publications (as well as larger local and regional newspapers) is augmented by online readership, something not measured in the current poll."
