Pew Research Center's biannual survey on how Americans get their news revealed significant shifts underway from print to new media, and even from television to the internet. But it looks like that idiot box remains our number one source for just what's going on in the world around us. The article shows the demographics to be pretty much where you'd expect them to be as far as who goes where for their news. The younger, more affluent and/or more educated you are the more likely you are to go online for your news. The older, poorer and less educated you are the more likely you are to rely on the TV.

I live in a pretty small town that's chock full of poor, uneducated people and I can assure you that most of those citizens still think of computers as that fancy technology they use in them colleges and whatnot. And the Internets, well that's where you go for sin! But the young people, who have grown up with computers and the web are more savvy than their parents and if they can afford a computer, then they're online. Most are playing World of Warcraft, but they're still on there.

But for those that are watching television, more and more catching news on the specialty channels like Fox News and CNN. The biggest victims of these changing news patterns are those 6:30/5:30c national news casts. So it seems that there is a gradual shift in news gathering habits. When you are poor and can't afford anything, you get your news from network television. Once you get cable, you switch to the news boutique channels. Then when you get a PC, you start to get your news online.

And with more streaming video available, how can television compete with the immediacy and "on demand" abilities of online. If Katie Couric is talking about Obama and I want to know about Iraq, I can't change her topic, but online I can switch to a different page. The news scrolls along the bottom have tried to provide methods of getting as much varying news data into our brains at once, but even that is at the discretion of the network. Only online are we completely in control of what we lean, but that opens up a whole new discussion, then doesn't it?

The thing that's interesting to me is how these trends will continue to change the face of news in the future. Already, with each passing year the traditional paper newspaper sees drops in its circulation and a gradual increase in the median age of its readers. After all, I know I'd rather hit my home page of RSS news feeds and find out what's happening right now than wait until tomorrow and hope it happened before the paper went to press. We're an "in demand" society and even television news can only keep us so informed on the topics we're personally interested in. Magazines and newspapers haven't got a chance. Look at what's happened to TV Guide's circulation now that we can get the schedules online.

Hell, many of us get our news directly downloaded to our PDAs or cell phones these days. That way we could strip down to our Speedos and run up and down the streets screaming the moment Michael Phelps clinched that eighth gold. But how much can news and media transfer to the web? I still enjoy reading a newspaper from time to time, but I certainly don't read them daily as I used to so I could keep up with world happenings. Will there still be a place for newspapers as we know them now fifty years from now?

What about news on the television? Hell, will the television even exist as we know it, or will it just be an "in demand" portal to news and programming of all kinds. If so, what will we name this website? Already, how many young people have no idea what those sticks are coming out of the top of our logo, and with TV going digital, those won't even exist anymore!

Even though it's probably silly to do, considering that you're all already online and at least getting this from the web, but I'm going to ask anyway: