BigShinyThing

The key bits:

A sizable minority of Americans find themselves at the intersection of these two longstanding trends in news consumption. Integrators, who get the news from both traditional sources and the internet, are a more engaged, sophisticated and demographically sought-after audience segment than those who mostly rely on traditional news sources. Integrators share some characteristics with a smaller, younger, more internet savvy audience segment – Net-Newsers – who principally turn to the web for news, and largely eschew traditional sources.

Net-Newsers are the youngest of the news user segments (median age: 35). They are affluent and even better educated than the News Integrators: More than eight-in-ten have at least attended college. Net-Newsers not only rely primarily on the internet for news, they are leading the way in using new web features and other technologies. Nearly twice as many regularly watch news clips on the internet as regularly watch nightly network news broadcasts (30% vs. 18%).

Net-Newsers do rely on some well known traditional media outlets. They are at least as likely as Integrators and Traditionalists to read magazines such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and somewhat more likely to get news from the BBC.

So, in short, good news for those traditional operators — like CNN and the BBC — who have invested in developing their offerings into video and TV reporting. Also good news for heavy hitters such as The New Yorker - suggesting that good print journalism does, in fact, have a future.

There are also some worrying trends:

In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998.

Believability ratings for national news organizations remain very low. If anything, believability ratings for major online news outlets – including news aggregators such as Google News and AOL News – are lower than for major print, cable and broadcast outlets.

Anyone interested in the media (hello?) can read the full report at Pew’s main site.

We LOVE Kristen McMenamy here at BST. Stuff Cindy Crawford, the fabulously alien-looking supermodel is our ideal of female beauty. And her now-grey hair has made her look even more A-M-AAA-ZING (as our dear friend Gerardo would say). However, fashion followers would be wise to avoid the ‘glad to be grey’ trend unless — like Kristen — you have cheekbones that you can stab puppies with.