The choices of old media versus new media among the audience --- and the divide it seemed to be creating --- is giving way to the Integrator. That's one of the key observations of the new study on news consumption from the Pew Research Center for People & The Press.
A "sizable minority" (about 23 per cent) finds itself at the intersection of traditional and emerging sources of news and consumes bits of both in order to satisfy themselves. They are sophisticated and sought-after as a demographic for advertisers. They spend more time with news, they're a bit older, and they enjoy keeping up with developments.
On the other hand, the Net Newsers (13 per cent) eschew many traditional sources and focus on a wide array of new providers of content. The largest group, the Traditionalists (52 per cent), are very much aligned with television (still America's largest source of news) and newspapers. The Disengaged (14 per cent) stand out for their relative non-interest in news.
The biennial report indicates a continued decline in newspaper consumption and a growth that hasn't stopped yet in online news consumption.
Several other findings stand out:
1. The number of young people who say they hadn't consumed news in the last day has grown to roughly one-third from one-quarter a decade ago.
2. The online aggregators like Google News and AOL News are trusted even less than the mistrusted national news sources.
3. Social networking is popular among young people, but not as a news source.
