High school students are more aware of the news and the world around them than most people give them credit for, Warren Watson, director of the Journalism Institute for Digital Education, Activities and Scholarship, said.
The second part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation 2006 follow-up survey studied how often high school students paid attention to the news and from what medium they received news.
Initially, this part of the survey was just meant to be a small add-on, but the information was interesting enough that the Knight Foundation decided to create a separate survey.
Watson said the general feeling among media people was that kids didn't keep up with the news.
"That was not the case," Watson said. "They are plugged into the news. They are appreciating mainstream news in a different way."
Gerry Appel, education specialist for J-IDEAS, said high school students' media consumption was underestimated.
"I think we found out we sometimes give high school students a rap that they do not follow the news whatsoever," Appel said. "What it reaffirms is that high schoolers are more interested in news than what they are given credit for."
The Internet has become the major source for information for high school students, with 66 percent of them accessing news and information on a weekly basis.
"Where they get their news is different than where people got their news in the past," Watson said.
Students get their news from portal sites, like Yahoo!, Google and AOL, Watson said, in addition to broadcast network and newspaper sites. Watson said the students are still getting the traditional news in the form of Associated Press stories, they're just getting it in non-traditional ways.
The problem with the Internet, Watson said, is that it's easy to get distracted.
"The negative thing with the Internet is that it promotes people to wander around," Watson said.
Besides the Internet becoming more popular, another significant finding was that 44 percent of students found television news to be the most accurate, the highest number out of all news sources.
"I used to be a TV news producer and I don't think its significantly more trustworthy," Appel, who worked at WISE-TV 33 in Fort Wayne, said. "I would say they are fairly close."
Students ranked newspapers the second most accurate, according to the survey, at 35 percent.
Appel said that high-profile cases like the Jayson Blair scandal may have given students a false perception of newspapers.
The Internet was third at 9 percent, radio was fourth at 6 percent and Internet blogs were dead last at 1 percent.
Students don't trust blogs, Watson said. "They have a way to go to gain credibility," he said.
Appel said radio is probably ranked so low because students don't listen to it often.
"You have some really strong journalism on radio, NPR," Appel said. "A lot of radio is very quick briefs; hard to screw that up."
Watson said part two of the survey suggests reaching kids through digital media is important. He said J-IDEAS has put more emphasis on podcasts and online news.
Students have Internet access everywhere, he said, and they're becoming more online centered.
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