Newspaper Still Plays the LeadingRole in US

Everywhere you turn， there are stories about the rapid ascent of the Internet as Americans information medium of choice. The trend line is clearly pointing in that direction， but according to a new national survey， traditional media are far from being outmoded or irrelevant.

The survey， by the independent Pew Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism and the newspaper-supported Knight Foundation， broke down local information into 16 topic areas and asked people where they learn about each of them.

Turns out， Americans have developed what the Pew Centers director， Tom Rosenstiel， calls a complex ecosystem in which people rely on different platforms for different topics.

More than 80 percent of respondents， for instance， said they still turn to local TV first for breaking news. And 89 percent go there， not to the Web， to get the latest weather information.

And newspapers are a long way from being dead as a go-to information source. Newspapers and newspaper websites ranked first or tied for first as the resource Americans rely on in 11 of the 16 key categories—including crime， taxes， and the arts.

Even the oldest communication form of all—word of mouth—ranked second to local TV as respondents preferred source of information about their communities.

At the same time， according to the Pew and Knight report， “Nearly half of adults occasionally now get local information on mobile devices， though it is still largely a supplemental platform for them.”

The survey of 2，251 American adults is one of the first of nationwide scope that clearly shows the growing complexity of the media landscape， and the willingness—even eagerness—with which consumers are relying on both old and new formats to get their information.

無論你走到哪里，都能聽到有關互聯網成為美國人媒體信息來源選擇的故事。發展趨勢自然是朝著這個方向的，然而，根據一項新的國民調查，傳統媒體還遠未過時或遠離人們。

這項調查是由獨立機構美國皮尤研究中心卓越新聞計劃和由報刊業支持的騎士基金會發起的，他們將當地新聞分為16個領域，向人們詢問他們從何處得知這些信息。

據皮尤中心主任Tom Rosenstiel的說法，在美國，已形成一個復雜的生態系統，人們依賴不同的平臺來獲取不同信息。

比如，至少80%的被訪問者說，他們仍把電視作為了解當地新聞的首要手段，89%的人通過電視了解最新的氣象信息，而不是通過上網。

報紙還遠未消失，仍是一大信息來源。在16類信息中，有11種信息是主要通過報紙和報紙網站獲得的，包括犯罪、稅收和藝術。

即使是最古老的信息傳播方式——口口相傳，也僅次于當地電視臺，是被訪問者最喜歡的了解社區信息的途徑。

同時，根據皮尤和騎士的報告：“將近一半的成年人不時地通過移動設備掌握當地信息，但這在很大程度上仍是一種輔助的平臺。”

這次調查涉及2251名美國人，是首次全國范圍內的調查。調查清楚表明了美國日益復雜的媒體現狀，并且消費者也非常喜歡同時使用老式和新式的信息渠道。endprint