A new report by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, finds that a third of Americans now watch news videos online, about as many as say they watch news on cable television. Among those aged 18-29, around half do.
    In years past Pew’s "State of the News Media" reports have been sombre, chronicling the reduction of jobs and the shrinkage of news budgets.     1    This year, however, Pew sounded more optimistic, pointing to the amount of digital-news services, such as Vice’s online news channel, that have sprung up recently. Around 5,000 full-time jobs have been created at 468 digital-news firms, according to Pew.
    Lower costs explain why so many digital news firms, like Silicon Valley start-ups, are launching today. Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst, reckons it costs as little as $5m to start a "credible" digital news offering. Financiers and philanthropists are investing in news: eBay founder Pierre Omidyar put $250m into a new non-profit, First Look Media. All this has injected hope into a beleaguered industry. Last month Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, predicted that journalism may "be entering into a new golden age" and that the news industry would grow ten- or a hundredfold.
        2    The rise of digital-media firms has done little to restore local news coverage, which has suffered with the closure of many local papers. Some positive news is welcome, but newsrooms continue to bleed jobs.     3    Digital-news firms’ long-form narratives and investigative journalism may grab attention, but they are unlikely to compensate for projects that will never take place again in old newsrooms because of the budgetary difficulty.
    Facebook users may be reading news, but they spend on average only a minute and a half on a news site each month if they come from Facebook, about a third of the time that visitors spend if they go to a newspaper’s site directly.     4    And digital video may be growing, but its advertising only accounts for around 10% of all digital ad revenues, and viewing growth has slowed. Even television news is not having an easy time. In 2013 the three big cable news channels—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—lost around 11% of their combined audience during prime-time.     5    The news industry today resembles Newton’s third law of motion, says Amy Mitchell, Pew’s director of journalism research: for every action, there is an equally strong reaction. The momentum might have shifted online, but gravity is still pulling everyone down to earth.