Digital environment is now an extremely important component in how Americans find out about events in your area and issues in news bulletins. Today, almost as many U.S. adults say they like to have their local news through the internet as approach so with the television set.

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

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

Beyond digital to be the preferred pathway, 89% of Americans get at least some local news digitally leading to four-in-ten (41%) do this often. This stops working to around equal shares who frequently get local news specifically from social media (25%) and internet-based news websites or mobile phone applications (26%).

At the same time TV stations certainly are a powerhouse source for local news, these are still accessed primarily through the analog format of televisions; this is especially true of radio news stations. Fully 76% of those people who get news from local Tv producers and 81% of those people who get news from the air primarily go to these providers from the traditional pathway.

But other news providers have a very substantial part of their audience who access them online. The type of who get local news from daily newspapers, for example, 43% primarily access them online while 54% buy them mainly in a print format. And up to 50 % of those who get local news from newsletters or listservs (49%) do this primarily online.

Chart showing that few Americans are digital-only or analog-only in relation to local news.

At the same time, few Americans are fully analog or fully digital in how they get local news. Instead, most (68%) mix offline and online pathways, by way of example, activating the television set to watch their local news station but going online to learn the daily newspaper and neighborhood listserv.

Just 7% of Americans indicate that they exclusively use digital pathways as his or her primary access points. Three times as much U.S. adults (21%) mainly access all providers they get news from with an analog pathway – though this really is still and a clear minority.

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