Podcast journalism has become a meaningful way for audiences to encounter news, especially among younger adults. Pew Research Center reports that 54% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the past 12 months in 2025, up from 49% in 2022. The same research finds that 32% of U.S. adults get news from podcasts at least sometimes, while Reuters Institute data shows that podcast use, platform choice, and willingness to pay vary sharply by market and age.
Contents
- Audience reach and generational differences
- How often people get news from podcasts
- What listeners want from journalism podcasts
- Trust, discovery, and audience identity
- International reach and platform habits
- Payments and the business opportunity
Audience reach and generational differences
Podcast listening is widespread, but it is not evenly distributed by age. Pew Podcasts and News Fact Sheet 2025 reports that 67% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 listened to a podcast in the past 12 months. The comparable shares were 62% for adults ages 30 to 49, 50% for adults ages 50 to 64, and 33% for adults ages 65 and older.
For journalism publishers, the age pattern matters because podcast reach is strongest among people who are already moving through digital audio and video ecosystems. News use follows a similar gradient, although it is lower than overall podcast listening:
| U.S. adult group | Gets news from podcasts often or sometimes |
|---|---|
| Ages 18–29 | 39% |
| Ages 30–49 | 39% |
| Ages 50–64 | 29% |
| Ages 65+ | 18% |
Source: Pew Podcasts and News Fact Sheet 2025.
Across all U.S. adults, 10% say they often get news from podcasts and 22% say they sometimes do so. The combined 32% is up from 22% in 2020, indicating that podcast news use has grown over that measurement period. Pew also reports that 39% of adults under 50 get news from podcasts often or sometimes, compared with 24% of adults ages 50 and older.
Other demographic differences are visible but less pronounced than the age gap. Men are at 35% for getting news from podcasts at least sometimes, compared with 28% of women. Adults with a college degree are at 38%, compared with 27% of adults with a high school education or less. Pew reports 35% for Black adults and 36% for Asian adults on the same measure.
Preference is narrower than reach. Eight percent of adults ages 18 to 29 prefer podcasts for news over any other platform, compared with 2% of adults ages 65 and older. Adults with a college degree are at 9%, versus 5% among adults with a high school education or less. Men are at 8% on this preference measure, compared with 5% of women.
How often people get news from podcasts
The 2025 Pew figures distinguish occasional exposure from a regular habit. Among U.S. adults, 32% get podcast news at least sometimes, but only 10% say they do so often. This difference suggests that podcast journalism serves both as a recurring news routine and as an occasional source used when a topic, host, or episode is relevant.
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 found that 35% of adults across 20 countries accessed one or more podcasts in the last month, while 13% regularly used a news podcast. In the Reuters Institute changing landscape for news podcasts 2025, only 2% across 20 markets said podcasts were their main source of news. Podcast journalism therefore has substantial reach without replacing the broader news environment for most people.
The market-level figures show how differently that reach can appear. Reuters Institute reported weekly news-podcast consumption of 15% in the United States, 13% in the United Kingdom, and 3% in Japan. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 reported 12% weekly reach in Denmark, 11% in Sweden, and 11% in Norway. Italy was at 6%, while Argentina was at 4%.
Interest in news is also concentrated among podcast news listeners. Reuters Institute reported that 71% of news podcast listeners were extremely or very interested in news, compared with 45% of non-podcast listeners. This is an audience characteristic, not a claim that podcasts alone create that interest: people who already pay close attention to news may be more likely to choose journalism podcasts.
What listeners want from journalism podcasts
Pew Podcasts and News Fact Sheet 2025 shows that explanation is the most common of three measured podcast-news formats. Among U.S. podcast news consumers, 69% at least sometimes listen to podcasts that explain a news topic in depth. The corresponding figures are 61% for podcasts featuring hosts or guests sharing opinions about the news and 58% for podcasts that summarize the major news stories of the day.
The detailed frequency distribution reinforces that distinction:
- In-depth explainers: 7% listen extremely often, 22% often, 40% sometimes, 22% rarely, and 9% never.
- Opinion-focused news podcasts: 6% listen extremely often, 18% often, 37% sometimes, 27% rarely, and 11% never.
- Daily news summaries: 6% listen extremely often, 17% often, 34% sometimes, 28% rarely, and 14% never.
The figures describe listening frequency among U.S. podcast news consumers, measured in the Pew 2025 fact sheet. They do not establish that one format is more accurate or more effective than another. They do show that depth is a particularly common part of the podcast journalism experience, while opinion and daily summaries also reach substantial portions of the audience.
Reuters Institute reported that 73% of listeners say podcasts help them understand issues more deeply than other media. That result aligns with the strong reported interest in in-depth explainers, but it is a listener perception rather than an independent test of comprehension.
Audience motivations also differ by age. In Pew Podcasts as a Source of News and Information 2023, 75% of podcast listeners ages 18 to 29 said entertainment was a major reason they listened, compared with 30% of listeners ages 65 and older. Seventy percent of listeners ages 18 to 29 cited having something to listen to while doing something else, versus 22% of listeners 65 and older. Learning was a major reason for 61% of listeners ages 65 and older.
Trust, discovery, and audience identity
Trust in podcast news is not uniform. Pew Podcasts and News Fact Sheet 2025 reports that 53% of U.S. podcast news consumers trust podcast news about the same as other sources. Twenty-three percent trust it more, and another 23% trust it less.
Political differences appear within the more-than-other-sources response: 31% of Republicans and Republican leaners say they trust podcast news more than other sources, compared with 15% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. An earlier Pew Podcasts as a Source of News and Information 2023 result reported that 46% of Americans who got news from podcasts said they trusted podcast news more than other sources, compared with 19% of Democrats who said this. These are results from different Pew research periods and should not be treated as a single time series.
The 2023 Pew research also found that 40% of Republican podcast news consumers had often heard podcast news they would not have heard elsewhere, compared with 21% of Democrats. Among podcast listeners, 46% of Republicans and Republican leaners had listened to a podcast in the past year, versus 54% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Podcasts connected to news organizations were cited by 14% of Republican podcast listeners and 26% of Democratic podcast listeners.
Together, these figures point to a medium that can support both broad news exposure and strong identity-driven listening. They do not show that all podcast audiences share the same editorial expectations. A newsroom developing a show should distinguish between explainers, daily summaries, opinion programs, and organization-branded reporting because the formats attract different kinds of attention and trust.
International reach and platform habits
Podcast journalism is distributed through a mixture of global platforms and national public-service or publisher platforms. In the United States, Reuters Institute reported that 50% of podcast consumers use YouTube to access podcasts. Among U.S. podcast consumers ages 18 to 34, 50% use Spotify, compared with 24% of podcast consumers over 55.
The U.K. shows a more mixed platform picture. Reuters Institute reported that 41% of podcast listeners use Spotify and 37% use BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds reaches 48% of U.K. podcast listeners aged 45 and older, compared with 30% of listeners under 45.
Norway illustrates the role of a national platform. Reuters Institute reported that 63% of podcast listeners use NRK Radio. Usage reached 72% among listeners aged 45 and older and 58% among listeners under 45. By narrower age groups, NRK Radio was used by 67% of listeners ages 25 to 34 and 60% of listeners ages 35 to 44.
These numbers make distribution a central editorial decision. A podcast publisher may need a presence on major global platforms for discovery while also considering the platform habits that are strongest in a particular country. Platform usage figures are not the same as exclusive audiences; the supplied Reuters Institute measures report use of each service, so listeners may appear in more than one platform category.
The scale of individual programs can also be substantial. Reuters Institute reported that Joe Rogan podcast episodes regularly receive over 3 million views on YouTube. That figure is a program-level example and should not be interpreted as a typical result for journalism podcasts generally.
Payments and the business opportunity
Direct payment remains much less common than listening. Pew Podcasts and News Fact Sheet 2025 reports that 6% of U.S. adults directly paid for or gave money to news podcasts in the past 12 months. By comparison, 17% paid or gave money to any news source in the last year. Pew also reports that 6% paid, subscribed, donated, or became a member of a news podcast, while 93% did not do so during that period.
The Reuters Institute changing landscape for news podcasts 2025 found a more promising willingness-to-pay signal among existing news podcast listeners. Forty-six percent of U.S. news podcast listeners said they would pay a reasonable price for news-related podcasts they like. The corresponding figures were 39% in the United Kingdom and 41% in Norway.
This gap separates current conversion from stated potential. Six percent of U.S. adults actually paid, subscribed, donated, or became members of a news podcast in the Pew measurement, while much larger shares of news podcast listeners said they would pay a reasonable price in the Reuters Institute measurement. The figures come from different studies and periods, so they should not be combined into a forecast or used to calculate a conversion rate.
For journalism organizations, the clearest opportunity is therefore conditional: audiences value depth, many listeners are highly interested in news, and a substantial share of existing listeners expresses willingness to pay. The challenge is turning that interest into direct support while preserving the discovery and access that currently make podcast journalism useful to a broad audience.