Extra! Extra! Read all about it! …or hear it on the radio, watch it on TV, refresh it on Twitter/X, or get trapped in a 47-minute YouTube deep dive.

This video tracks how Americans consumed news and public information from 1920 all the way to 2026, revealing the dramatic rise and fall of newspapers, radio broadcasts, evening network news, cable TV, Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube, podcasts, and more. What starts as a world dominated by printed newspapers slowly transforms into a fragmented digital battlefield where everyone gets their information from completely different places.

Using a massive “Synthesized News Source Index,” the creator combined over a century of historical records and audience research, including newspaper circulation data, FCC archives, Gallup polls, Nielsen ratings, Pew Research studies, Reuters Digital News Reports, Google Trends data, and social media analytics. The result is an incredibly detailed visualization of how humanity’s relationship with information evolved over time.

The most fascinating part isn’t just seeing old media die off, it’s watching how every new technology completely reshaped the speed, trust, and culture surrounding news itself. From families gathered around a radio during World War II to millions endlessly scrolling personalized feeds in 2026, this video feels less like a history lesson and more like a timeline of humanity’s changing attention span.