How many people now get news online?

The best estimate at the end of 2004 was that somewhere between 42% and 59% of Americans over 18 - 92 million to 128 million people - had gone online for news at some point.1 [1] Those numbers are virtually unchanged from a year earlier.

To understand what these figures mean - and why they can vary so much - it is useful to look at how they are derived.