It's no secret that people are consuming less news than they once did. Newspaper readership, whether in the dead-tree or digital form, is down. It is getting hard to find a printed newspaper in many downtowns and hotels. It has been a long time since the news magazines like Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report had the clout they did at their peak. The most influential news magazine in the United States, by leaps and bounds, isn’t even American, but British—The Economist, a must-read for elites.

Obviously, there are specialized publications that elites or aficionados read for professional or pleasure purposes. But this is more about where normal people get their news, and on what basis they form opinions. Similarly, fewer people are watching or listening to broadcast television and radio news, whether the morning or evening news programs or the Sunday morning public-affairs shows.

There is an ebb and flow to cable-news viewership, both collectively and individually for CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, but their numbers are not nearly as large as many assume them to be.

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