News is increasingly discovered through platforms, video, and search, while trust, payment, and local relevance remain uneven. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 covers 47 markets across six continents, and Pew Research Center data provides a closer look at major digital outlets and local news in the United States.
Contents
- How people discover news
- Video and social platforms
- Trust, misinformation, and news fatigue
- Who pays for online news
- How major news outlets build digital reach
- Local news and community life
How people discover news
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 describes a news environment in which the route to a story matters almost as much as the publisher. Search and aggregators were the main gateway to news for 33% of respondents across the report’s markets. Social media was the main gateway for 29%, while direct access to a news brand was the main gateway for 22%.
That 22% direct-access figure is also a long-term signal. Only 22% identified news websites or apps as their main source of online news in 2024, down 10 percentage points from 2018. For readers, this means a headline may be encountered through a search result, a feed, a message, or a video recommendation before the publication itself becomes visible.
Online video is important, but it is rarely the only format people use. Around 4% of people across countries used online video alone for news each week, according to the Reuters Institute. The broader picture is more mixed: 66% accessed short news video weekly, while 51% accessed longer-form video weekly.
The report also records a shift in Facebook news consumption. Use was down 4 percentage points year over year across all countries measured. At the same time, six networks reached at least 10% of respondents, compared with just two a decade earlier. A wider platform mix gives audiences more entry points, but it also makes the news experience less centralized.
Video and social platforms
The main weekly news platforms in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 had distinct levels of reach. YouTube was used for news by 31% of the global sample each week. WhatsApp reached 21%, TikTok reached 13%, and X reached 10%.
| Platform | Global sample using it for news weekly |
|---|---|
| YouTube | 31% |
| 21% | |
| TikTok | 13% |
| X | 10% |
News video was mainly consumed on online platforms for 72% of respondents. This is a distribution fact as much as a format fact: a newsroom can produce a video, but the audience may meet it inside a platform with its own recommendation system, comments, and sharing behavior.
Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media, Digital News research shows how extensively high-traffic outlets maintained platform presences. The analysis of the 105 highest-traffic news outlets found that 100% had an official presence on Facebook, 99% on X, 97% on Instagram, and 93% on YouTube. TikTok was used by 89% of these outlets, up from 57% in 2021. Snapchat had a smaller official presence at 25%.
The same Pew analysis found that 92% of the 105 outlets offered newsletters, 92% had an official presence on Flipboard, 87% had an official presence on Apple News, and 76% released podcasts. Comments were available on articles at 37% of the outlets. In 2023, 67% had both Android and iOS apps, 2% had Android-only apps, and 6% had iOS-only apps.
These figures show a broad distribution strategy: social networks, newsletters, podcasts, aggregators, and apps all sit alongside the publication’s own website. For students and other readers moving between phones, social feeds, and messaging services, the news brand is often encountered as a collection of formats rather than a single homepage.
Trust, misinformation, and news fatigue
Trust remains uneven across markets. Around 40% of respondents in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 said they trusted most news most of the time. The report’s trust score was 69% in Finland, compared with 23% in Greece and 23% in Hungary. The United States recorded a trust score of 32%.
Concern about authenticity is also widespread. The share worried about what is real and fake on the internet rose to 59% across the markets covered. The figure was 72% in the United States, 81% in South Africa, and 70% in the United Kingdom.
TikTok users reported a particularly divided experience. In the Reuters Institute data, 27% of TikTok users said they struggled to detect trustworthy news, while 44% said they found it easy to detect trustworthy news. These are not identical measures of trust in a publisher; they describe how confident users feel when judging news in a platform environment.
Audience attention is another constraint. Selective news avoidance stood at 39%, and news fatigue also stood at 39%. Women reported news overload at 43%, compared with 34% among men. Together, these figures describe an audience that may want useful information while also trying to limit the volume, repetition, or emotional pressure of news consumption.
Who pays for online news
Payment for online news varies sharply by country. Across 20 countries, the share paying for online news rose from 10% in 2014 to 17% in the Reuters Institute’s 2024 report. The country figures below refer to people who paid for online news in the last year.
| Country | Paid for online news in the last year |
|---|---|
| Norway | 40% |
| Sweden | 31% |
| United States | 22% |
| Australia | 21% |
| Germany | 13% |
| France | 11% |
| Japan | 9% |
| United Kingdom | 8% |
The potential market among non-payers is more limited than a simple conversion calculation might suggest. Only 2% of non-payers said they would pay the equivalent of an average full-price subscription, while 55% said they would not be prepared to pay anything. In the United States, more than half of digital-news payers reported paying less than the median main subscription price of $16. Norway’s median price for a main news subscription was the equivalent of $25.
Discounting is common among those who do pay. In the United States, 46% of digital-news payers were paying less than full price. The comparable figures were 78% in Poland, 38% in Norway, 25% in Denmark, and 21% in France. These figures describe payment conditions in the report’s measurement period, not a universal price for every publication.
How major news outlets build digital reach
Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media, Digital News analysis measured audience scale and visit depth among the 105 highest-traffic news outlets. In 2022, those outlets averaged 27.1 million monthly unique visitors. Their average visit lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds.
That combination is notable: a very large monthly audience can coexist with short average visits. The platform and product choices described above—newsletters, podcasts, apps, social accounts, and aggregators—give outlets ways to reach people beyond a single visit to the main site.
The outlet-level percentages also show that some channels are close to universal while others remain selective. Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube were used by at least 93% of the measured outlets. TikTok’s 89% presence, up from 57% in 2021, marked a substantial expansion among high-traffic publishers. By contrast, only 37% allowed comments on articles, suggesting that distribution reach and direct audience participation are separate strategic choices.
The app figures from 2023 provide another distinction. Most outlets with apps supported both major mobile operating systems: 67% had both Android and iOS apps. A smaller 2% had Android-only apps, and 6% had iOS-only apps. These numbers do not account for every possible mobile access route; they describe the app availability recorded in the Pew analysis.
Local news and community life
Pew Research Center’s Local News Trends 2024 shows that local news is still tied to practical needs and community identity. In the United States, 68% of adults said they got local news and information about local weather. Crime news reached 34%, arts and culture 28%, the local economy 22%, local schools 16%, and local sports 15%. Overall, 90% of local-news consumers got news about at least one of the tracked local topics.
Satisfaction differed by subject. Among consumers of each type of local news, 63% were extremely or very satisfied with the quality of local weather news. The comparable figures were 44% for local traffic news, 43% for local sports news, 26% for local economy news, and 25% for local government-and-politics news.
Community attachment was associated with how important people considered local outlets. Among people very attached to their community, 66% said local news outlets were extremely or very important to community well-being. That figure was 46% among people somewhat attached to their community and 31% among people not very or not at all attached.
Only 22% of U.S. adults said they followed local news very closely. The figure was 9% among adults ages 18 to 29 and 35% among adults ages 65 and older. By education, 17% of college graduates followed local news very closely, compared with 28% of adults with a high school education or less.
Views about the role of local journalists were also divided. Overall, 69% of Americans said local journalists should remain neutral on community issues, while 29% said they should advocate for change. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 39% said local journalists should advocate for change.
Local news reaches people through different formats. In 2024, 31% of U.S. adults primarily got local daily newspaper news via print, 41% primarily got it through websites, apps, or email, and 20% primarily got it through social media posts. For local TV news stations, 54% primarily got news via television, 30% via websites, apps, or email, and 13% via social media posts.
Financial perceptions do not align perfectly with direct support. In Pew’s 2024 local-news findings, 63% of Americans said their local news outlets were doing very or somewhat well financially, while 15% said they had paid or given money to any local news source in the past year. The figures offer separate views of perceived financial health and personal contribution.