SEVENTY PER CENT of U.S. Americans think traditional journalism has lost its touch, and nearly half of them are turning to the Internet to get their news instead.

In the online poll carried out by a We Media/Zogby Interactive, 48 per cent of the 1,979 American respondents who took part in the survey said that they got their main fix of news and information from the Internet, a figure which is up 40 per cent from last year.

The poll also showed that 55 per cent of 18 to 29 year olds, who grew up with the internet, got most of their news on the net, compared to only 35 per cent of people over the age of 65, who prefer news sources like television. Some 86 per cent of all respondents reckoned that Web sites were an important news source, with 56 per cent reckoning cyber news sites were VERY important.

A more in depth look at the results of the survey show that the Internet not only overshadows television, radio, and newspapers as the most commonly used and most central source of news and information, but that web based news sites were considered by almost a third of people (32 per cent) to be more trustworthy, with more traditional media sources like newspapers (22 per cent), TV (21 per cent) and radio (15 per cent) all lagging behind. Three in four people (75 per cent) think that the Internet has had a positive effect on the quality of journalism in general.

Although blogging was seen as "significant" by 59 per cent of Americans, only one per cent considered blogs to be a trusted source of news and, equally, only only one per cent considered them a primary source of news.

Still, if the online news fad continues, print newspapers could soon find themselves rapidly becoming an inferior secondary option. But, then again, the results are hardly shocking considering that they are a product of an online poll. µ