Extra! Extra! Read All About How We Consume News Today!

Starting in the mid-19th century United States, newspaper street vendors would shout "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" when selling an Extra edition, also referred to as a Special edition.

This is the sensational news or event that arrived too late for the regularly scheduled print edition. This could include events such as the announcement of war, the assassination of a public figure, or even new developments in a popular trial. 

While you can still find newspaper vendors and stands from the streets to your local Starbucks, many would agree that the trend of news consumption at your fingertips is on the rise.  

So how do you gather your information?

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According to the Pew Research Center, Americans still prefer watching to reading the news — and mostly still through television. In fact, they say "three-quarters of American who prefer watching the news opt for TV, but since 2016 slightly more watchers name the internet as their platform of choice." 

It should come as no surprise that, across all news formats, young adults lead the preference for digital. 

While looking at the trend of news consumption, here are a few staggering digital statistics to consider:

• Over 350,000 hours of live video are streamed on Twitter every day.
• More than 67% of Americans are using Facebook as their primary source of news (Fortunelords).
• 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook (TechCrunch). 
• Over one billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day. (YouTube stats gathered by HubSpot). 
• YouTube has more viewers among 18- to 49-year-olds than any U.S. cable network. 
• Snapchat users, in total, watch 10 billion videos each day (AdWeek). 
• The time users spent watching video on Instagram increased by more than 40% in 2016 (Instagram). 

While not all video consumption relates to news, it does help us gain insight to the power of video and the speed at which you can gather information. So how many of these sources are credible? The jury is still out on this, but we can say that news is now published and updated in seconds — and can easily be accessed through various sources. 

The real question is, how do you access your news? Do you watch through the TV or through a TV app? Do you watch news trending on Twitter, or wait each morning for your daily newspaper delivery? We would love to hear your comments in the section below.