People are getting more of their information from the Internet according to a new study, and Ball State University's News Research Institute is going to focus on that trend.The second part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation 2006 follow-up survey on media consumption, released on Friday, studied how often high school students paid attention to the news and from what medium they received news. The News Research Institute, the fourth institute created by January's $20 million Lily grant, will open soon. It will provide the type of content that kids, who have grown up with the Internet, are looking for, Warren Watson, director of the Journalism Institute for Digital Education, Activities and Scholarship, said."Kids are appreciating media in a different way and we're talking about creating a different form here for people," Watson said. "[There is a] great intersection between Ball State and future media."The Internet was the most popular source of information for high school students, with 66 percent of them accessing news and information on a weekly basis. However, 44 percent of students considered television news to be the most accurate, ranking higher than the 35 percent for newspapers."I used to be a TV news producer and I don't think it's significantly more trustworthy," Gerry Appel, education specialist for J-IDEAS who worked at WISE-TV in Fort Wayne, said. "I would say they are fairly close."High-profile cases such as the Jayson Blair scandal may have given students a false perception of newspapers, Appel said.The Internet was considered the most accurate by 9 percent of students, but only 1 percent of students said Web logs, or blogs, were the most accurate."They have a way to go to gain credibility," Watson said.Radio wasn't much higher, with 6 percent of student saying it was the most accurate. Appel said radio probably ranked so low because students don't often listen to it."You have some really strong journalism on radio, NPR," Appel said. "A lot of radio is very quick briefs; hard to screw that up."
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