Online Audience - 2006 Annual Report

So how many of those people go online specifically for news? That answer, too, varies from one survey to the next, but some generalizations seem clear.

First, the vast majority of adults who use the Internet do at some time go there for news.

In 2005, approximately 70% of American adults who had gone online said they had used the Internet for news, roughly the same number as a year earlier, according to the Pew Internet project. In real numbers, that is approximately 97 million adult Americans. And with changes in population, that number is up from the 86 million estimated in November 2004.4

The main area of growth in 2005 seemed to be in regularity. Everyday use grew seven percentage points, according to the Pew Research Center, to roughly a third (34%) of users, up from 27% in 2004. Asking the question slightly differently, Pew Internet found that those who said they got news online “yesterday” was up to 30% of users, or three percentage points from 2004.5

Percent of Internet Users Who Access News Online

Percent accessing news online ever or yesterday, 2000 to 2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project tracking surveys

Another way to measure online news appeal in relation to other news media is to flip the question around: Ask not if you go online for news but more broadly where you get most of your news. Measured that way, Americans’ reliance on the Internet for their daily news has doubled over the last few years. Survey research from Consumer Reports shows that 11% now get most of their news over the Web, up from just 5% in 2002.6

Thus, only slightly more people seem to be using the Web for news, but even more seem to be using it regularly — perhaps an even more important figure for those investing in the medium.

And there is some evidence that newspaper Web sites in particular are gaining. More than two thirds (67%) of American adults said they read either local or national newspaper Web sites in late 2005, an increase of five percentage points from earlier in 2005.7 If those people are substituting the online version of the paper for the print version, as some of the data suggest, that is probably one of the reasons print newspaper circulation losses are accelerating.

It is also worth repeating something we noted last year, that some observers say online news consumption numbers may be undercounted. First, the argument goes, people could get news from a variety of places they do not necessarily think of as news sites — such as the front page of Yahoo, MSN and AOL. And second, surveys do not usually include teenagers (link to “Youngest of the Young”), some of the heaviest users of the Web.8