STUDY SHOWS RISING DIVERSITY OF NET USERS

WASHINGTON -- As more Americans jump on the Internet to catch the latest
news, their growing diversity is changing patterns of online use.

Two years ago, when just 23 percent of Americans -- mostly affluent men --
were online, stories about technology were the top news draw. Today, with
41 percent of adults using the Internet -- including more women and people
with modest incomes -- the weather is the most popular online news
attraction, a study of Internet use shows.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People &
the Press, shows dramatic growth in online news consumption. Nine percent
of American adults got news from broadcast TV Web sites in 1998, compared
with 5 percent in 1995. Other news Web sites also recorded gains.

Whether the increasing use of the Internet as a news source is leading to a
decreasing use of traditional news outlets is unclear.

Three out of four Internet news consumers said they get more of their news
from traditional outlets, while 11 percent said they are now using print
and broadcast outlets less. But this is not a good gauge, because Internet
users tend to be more interested in the news than non-users.

When the media habits of users and non-users are contrasted, taking their
interest in politics and other demographic differences into account, the
survey found that heavy Internet news consumers watched relatively less
television news than their offline counterparts but were reading newspapers
and listening to radio news just as often.

The Pew researchers said their study also found other indications that
using the Internet may have caused a greater reduction in watching news
than in reading news.

The results are based on a telephone survey of 3,184 adults taken between
Oct. 26 and Dec. 1. Some results also were drawn from a nationwide sample
of 1,201 adults conducted Dec. 9-13.