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In today’s email:
- Featured story: The expansion of a local newspaper in Minnesota
- New from Pew Research Center: Young U.S. adults’ experiences with TikTok for news and politics
- In other news: OpenAI and Condé Nast sign content deal
- Looking ahead: Meta shuts down research tool CrowdTangle
- Chart of the week: About half of TikTok users under 30 say they use it to keep up with politics
🔥 Top story
Amid a long-term national decline in newspaper circulation, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has made the bold decision to expand its operations to cover other parts of Minnesota, changing its name to The Minnesota Star Tribune. The paper has been relatively stable financially in recent years, and it is now aiming to triple its digital subscriptions with new investment from its billionaire owner.
This would buck a national trend. The share of U.S. adults who say they often or sometimes get local news and information from daily newspapers has fallen from 43% in 2018 to 33% in 2024, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
That said, the Star Tribune’s digital goals reflect the changing way that Americans access their local newspapers. Among Americans who get news from local daily newspapers, just 31% access it primarily via the print version. About two-thirds of those who get news from local daily papers (66%) primarily access them online, including 41% who say they mainly use websites or apps and 25% who say they use social media. On the whole, about a quarter of U.S. adults (26%) say news websites or apps are their preferred way to get local news, compared with just 9% who prefer print sources.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center analysis looks at how U.S. TikTok users of different ages use the platform for news and politics.
TikTok users ages 18 to 29 are more likely than older users to say keeping up with news and politics are reasons they use the platform and to say they see several types of news-related content there, such as information about a breaking news event as it is happening. Younger TikTok users also express more positive opinions about the platform’s impact on American democracy.
This is a Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Read the full analysis here.
📌 In other news
- Condé Nast signs content deal with OpenAI
- How the sports betting industry has transformed sports media
- A look at a New York City newspaper and the disappearance of alt-weeklies
- The Onion will distribute a print edition for the first time in more than a decade
- How AI-generated local news is covering northwest Arkansas
- Man in Pakistan charged with spreading false information linked to UK riots
- Indigenous creators in Brazil clash with sensitive content bans on social platforms
📅 Looking ahead
Last week, Meta officially shut down CrowdTangle, a tool often used by researchers and journalists to track posts — including those containing misinformation — on Facebook and Instagram. Earlier this year, dozens of groups sent a letter to Meta asking to keep the tool running until January 2025 so that it would be available through the 2024 election cycle. Meta has announced an alternative to CrowdTangle, though access to the tool has been limited to academic researchers and nonprofit organizations, and users have questioned its capabilities.
A sizable share of Americans who regularly get news on Facebook (84%) and Instagram (76%) say they at least sometimes see news on the platforms that seems inaccurate, according to a 2024 Center report on how Americans get news on several social media platforms.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart is from a new Center analysis of U.S. TikTok users in different age groups. Young TikTok users are more likely than older Americans on the site to say they use it to keep up with politics and news. For example, 48% of TikTok users ages 18 to 29 say keeping up with politics is a major or minor reason they’re on the platform, compared with 36% of those ages 30 to 49 and even smaller shares of older users. About half of adult users under 30 (52%) also say getting news is a reason they use TikTok, again higher than the shares of older users for whom this is the case.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, and copy edited by Anna Jackson.
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