According to Ongo, a curated news service, more than half of Americans go online for news once or twice per day, and nearly one-third check for news three or more times. As we’ve reported, online news consumption reached a major milestone this year, surpassing newspapers as a preferred news source for the first time.
Fifty six percent of the 726 respondents go online for news once or twice per day, 26% visit three sites, and 24% visit four or more sites. The survey also found that men were more likely than women to visit multiple sites.
The most important news topics for the respondents were national news (77%), world news (75%), and local news (73%), followed by health (50%) and politics (49%). Other topics included business, finance, sports, technology, environment, and “other.”
Ongo reports that 37% spend between 15 and 30 minutes daily reading news online, 26% spend between 31 minutes and one hour, and 21% spend 15 minutes or less. These times were self-reported by survey participants.
According to a spokesperson for Ongo, the survey referred broadly to “sites,” “news sites,” and “websites” throughout the survey, and it did not ask specifically about native news applications, as opposed to Web content. It did cover content accessed on tablets and mobile devices as well as desktop/laptop computers.
