New Pew poll: Online newspaper readership growing

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press revealed that there is a growing number of people turning to the Internet for news. Since 2000, the number of people who say they go online every day for news is up 15 percent, and the number of people who say they check Internet news once a week has grown from 33 percent to 44 percent. The poll also found that using the Internet for news is not just for people under age 30. Thirty percent of Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 say the Internet is their main news source.

Nearly three-quarters of Internet newspaper readers cite convenience as the reason why they read online. While 50 percent of Americans say they are reading print newspapers as much as they did before they started reading Web newspapers, 35 percent say they now read print newspapers less often than their Web counterparts.

Web newspaper readers generally match print newspaper readers in terms of politics but not in demographics. In addition to being younger than print readers, Web newspaper readers are also mostly male and wealthy. Almost half of Internet newspaper readers have college degrees, compared with 27 percent of print readers. While 30 percent of Internet readers -- compared with 20 percent of newspaper readers -- call themselves liberals, they are "no more likely to think of themselves as Democrats, and divided their votes between Bush and Kerry in the 2004 election along almost precisely the same lines as regular newspaper readers," according to the summary of the poll results.

The poll also revealed an increased level of negative criticism of the press in certain areas -- like fairness, patriotism and political bias -- while overall most Americans still like mainstream news outlets.