The Pew Internet and American Life Project is out with their latest report on how Americans consume news.

There are many highlights in there, so I’ll just mention a few that are direct quotes from the report’s summary. I would strongly recommend that you read the rest for yourself.

• The internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news
• 50% [of Americans] say they read news in a local newspaper

• The majority of online news consumers (57%) say they routinely rely on just two to five websites for their news > 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means

• The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%)

• 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means

• Some 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from their favorite source or topics and 40% of internet users say an important feature of a news website to them is the ability to customize the news they get from the site