ZDnet | Newspapers don't make the grade in Web-savvy schools

Newspapers don't make the grade in Web-savvy schools

More U.S. teachers are using national and international online-news sites in the classroom, leaving behind newspapers that fail to grasp the Internet's importance in trying to reach students, a study found.

Fifty-seven percent of teachers use Internet-based news in the classroom with some frequency, said the study, which was based on a survey of 1,262 teachers in grades 5 through 12 in the fall of 2006 and released on Monday by the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education.

That compares with 31 percent for national television news and 28 percent for daily papers. Local television news, at 13 percent, was at the bottom of the list, the study found.

"Students do not relate to newspapers at all--any more than they would to vinyl records," one teacher said in the study.

The findings reflect a wider trend in the United States of falling circulation and advertising revenue at many daily papers as people go online for news and entertainment.

The trend has led to worries about the future of news and the financial future of the companies that traffic in it. Tribune, for example, has been pressed into weighing bids to sell itself to appease disgruntled shareholders.

The most popular sites are run by large news organizations like the BBC, The New York Times Co. and CNN, the study found said...