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A digital environment is currently an extremely important component in how Americans understand local events and issues in news reports. Today, almost as many U.S. adults say they like to obtain their local news on the internet as approach so through the tv set.

Chart showing that the overwhelming tastes Americans get at least some local news online.

Specifically, when asked which pathways they prefer for local news – the tv set, the web (either through social networking or websites/apps), print or radio – nearly the same percentage of U.S. adults say they like a web-based method (37% total, including 23% who favor news websites or apps and 15% who name social websites) as say they prefer television (41%). Far fewer prefer print newspapers (13%) or radio (8%). This close split between TV an internet-based pathways tracks closely with how Americans access news more generally.

Beyond digital is the preferred pathway, 89% of Americans get at least some local news digitally resulting in four-in-ten (41%) accomplish that often. This breaks down to around equal shares who often get local news specifically from social media (25%) and online news websites or mobile phone applications (26%).

Even as Tv producers are a powerhouse source for local news, they may be still accessed primarily from the analog format of tv sets; this is especially true of radio news stations. Fully 76% of those people who get news from local TV stations and 81% of those people who get news from radio stations primarily head to these providers from the traditional pathway.

But other news providers have a very substantial part of their audience who access them online. Those types of who get local news from daily newspapers, by way of example, 43% primarily access them online while 54% get them mainly within a print format. And up to 50 % of those people who get local news from newsletters or listservs (49%) accomplish that primarily online.

Chart showing that few Americans are digital-only or analog-only when it comes to local news.

At the same time, few Americans are fully analog or fully digital in the manner they get local news. Instead, most (68%) mix online and offline pathways, for example, switching on the tv screen set to look at their local news station but going on line to see the daily newspaper and neighborhood listserv.

Just 7% of Americans indicate that they exclusively use digital pathways as their primary access points. 3 x as numerous U.S. adults (21%) mainly access all providers they get news from with an analog pathway – though that is still and a clear minority.

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