Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Extra, Extra: Online News and Ad Sales Overtake Print

by Abby Seiff on March 14, 2011 at 01:40 PM

Call it. Time of death: 2010. For the first time, online news readership and ad revenue has surpassed its print counterpart in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. Released today, the fact-tank's State of the News Media report noted that 41-percent of Americans get "most of their news about national and international issues" from the Internet -- a 17-percent jump from last year. Meanwhile, 46-percent get news online at least three times a week. Only 40-percent get information from printed news as frequently.

The numbers shouldn't be particularly surprising to anyone who has, well, been reading the news for the past few years. Shuttered papers, shrunken newsrooms and an influx of digital journalism initiatives have all led to an inevitable tipping point.

It's not just print newspapers that are suffering. The report notes that local TV, radio, magazines and cable news have all seen declines in audience. It's likely that this trend will simply continue. Pew points out that 7-percent of Americans owned tablet devices in January, 2011 -- double the number from four months prior. Barring some baffling turn of events, both the hardware and online-only news organizations will continue to improve and expand as paper becomes decreasingly viable.

Tags: media, newspaper, online news, OnlineNews, pew research center, PewResearchCenter, study, top, web

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular