A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites

The headline figure from a survey of 2,787 US news consumers by research firm Outsell.

According to the News Users report, when news consumers need instant news, 57 per cent will go to digital sources. In this situation they are also more likely to go to an aggregator (31 per cent) than a newspaper site (8 per cent) the survey suggested.

When it comes to news sites vs aggregators, the research suggested that local newspapers still had the upper hand on local topics, such as family events, but says in its release that there are “cracks in the house”.