News Preferences

A recently released Pew Research Center study that monitored audience interest in 19 news categories from 1986 to 2006 showed growing interest in two areas---Washington Politics and Money. In the late 1980s, 17 percent of those polled closely read stories about national politics, while coverage of money was closely monitored by 23 percent of the audience. In the 2000-06 period, Washington politics had risen to 24 percent, while strong interest in news about money soared to 40 percent.

Interestingly, the Tabloid News category didn't gain in reader interest during the two decades studied by Pew. Stories about celebrity gossip, non-political scandals and popular culture were closely monitored by 21 percent in the 1980s and 18 percent in the final years of the survey. Coverage of natural disasters drew the most attention in the 1980s, while the Bad Weather category topped the preference list in the 1990s. Since 2000, U.S.-linked War/Terrorism scored the highest preference.

Full results can be found here.