Most Online News Readers Use 5 Sites or Fewer, Study Says

The audience for news online tends not to stick to a single site — that much has been known for years. But a new study says that even with a vast array of digital choices, “promiscuous” news consumption goes only so far.

Only 35 percent of the people who go online for news have a favorite site, and just 21 percent are more or less “monogamous,” relying primarily on a single Internet news source, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, in a report to be released Monday by Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.But 57 percent of that audience relies on just two to five sites. The findings parallel studies that say that people with hundreds of television channels tend to stick to a relative handful.

In the Pew survey, just 7 percent of people said they would be willing to pay for access to any news site. And even among the people who are most loyal to a single site, only 19 percent said they would pay, rather than seek free news somewhere else.

But many news sites have concluded that getting even 5 to 10 percent of their readers to pay would constitute success, and many — including The New York Times — have made plans to start some kind of pay system.

Analyzing data from Nielsen Online, the report also concludes that although there are thousands of news sites to choose from, a relatively small number, 199, get 80 percent of the United States traffic.