More Latinos Read All About It In English

By Hansi Lo Wang / NPR

Published July 23, 2013 at 1:50 PM PDT

This story was published more than 11 years ago.

Customers browse for English-language magazines and newspapers at a New York newsstand.

A growing share of Latinos in the U.S. are getting their news in English.

New survey results released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center show that 82 percent of Latino adults, up from 78 percent in 2006, use some form of English-language news media.

At the same time, fewer Latino adults -- now at 68 percent, down from 78 percent in 2006 -- are consuming news from Spanish-language TV, print, radio and online outlets.

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The trends, researchers say, are the result of changing demographics within the Latino community. The Pew report attributes the shift to four demographic trends:

Immigration has been on the decline. Fifty-one percent of Latino adults today are foreign-born. That's down from 55 percent in 2006.
Latino immigrants on average have spent two decades in the U.S. That's up from an average of 16 years in 2000.
A growing majority of Latinos, now at 59 percent, speak English well.That's up from 54 percent in 2006.
More young American-born, English-speaking Latinos are entering adulthood as news consumers at a rate of about 800,000 per year.

Almost a third of Latinos get their news in English only. That's up from 22 percent in 2006. The share of Spanish-only news consumers is down to 18 percent. (You can get more into the numbers in the full report.)

For Spanish-language media, though, it's not all bad news. The report points out that while there is a lower share of Latinos consuming Spanish-language media, there are now a record number of Latinos, 35 million, who speak Spanish at home.