Newspapers have become the least popular medium people use to keep up to date with news and current affairs, according to new research from Ofcom.
Ofcom’s annual news consumption study found that 31% of the population read a printed newspaper to keep informed, a significant fall from the 41% who said the same thing last year.
The sharp fall means that printed newspapers are now the least popular medium for checking news, behind radio (32%), the internet (41%) and television (67%).
While television remains by some distance the most popular medium, it too saw a significant fall from 75% last year to 67% in the current report.
There was also a decrease in the popularity of radio as a source of news with the proportion of people doing so falling from 36% to 32% year-on-year.
The fall in people using traditional forms of media to keep up with the news was accompanied by an increase in people using mobiles to stay up to date, from 21% to 25%, and a significant jump in those saying they got their news via word of mouth, from 11% to 14%.
Young people and news
The report unsurprisingly reflects the increase in popularity of going to digital sources for news, especially among younger demographics.
Around half of 16-to-24-year-olds use TV for news, falling to just 21% for newspapers and 23% for radio.
However, 59% of 16-to-24-year-olds said they go online to check news.
Most popular sources of news
The top news source in terms of reach was BBC1, which 48% of those surveyed said they used to check news, although it has fallen from the 53% who said so in 2014.
ITV ranks second, with 27% saying they use it as a news source.
The BBC website or app remains the third most-used news source (23%), followed in fourth place by the BBC News channel (at 14%).
Facebook is the joint fifth most popular source of news in terms of reach, with Sky News, at 12%.
The most-used radio stations are BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, while the most-read newspapers are the Sun and Daily Mail.
The BBC’s popularity was even more marked when looking just at those who get their news online, with 56% saying they do so via BBC sites or apps, far ahead of the next most popular, Facebook, which was used by 29%.