The report, by the Pew Research Center and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, surveyed news consumers and concluded that while television is the main source for three popular topics — weather, traffic and breaking news — newspapers and their Web sites are the main source for 11 other topics, like local government updates, zoning news and crime reports. It also found that word of mouth, most likely including text messages and Twitter posts, is the second most common meansof news distribution on the local level.

“There really is a nuanced ecosystem here with very old and very new sources blending,” said Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which collaborated with another arm of Pew, the Pew Internet American Life Project, to conduct the study.

The researchers set out to map the sources of news and information in local communities, and came away with encouraging and discouraging signs for local television and newspapers.

Television is the most common medium for local news, with 71 percent of people watching for local information at least once a week, according to a survey of 2,251 adults. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. But younger adults “rely on local television less,” and more on the Internet, the report says, “a fact that suggests more vulnerability for the medium in the future.”

In recent years many experimental newscasts and talk shows — usually with a soft-news bent — have popped up on some local stations in an effort to attract younger viewers.

The survey found that 50 percent of people read newspapers or their Web sites for local information at least once a week. People tend to get a much wider array of information from newspapers than from television — yet 69 percent of those surveyed also said they believed that the death of their local paper would have at most a minor impact on their news diet. Younger adults, the report states, “were especially unconcerned.”

Mr. Rosenstiel said the finding could be attributed to cognitive dissonance (the tendency to hold two clashing views at the same time), or to an assumption that the news and information would be available elsewhere if the newspaper were to close.

“There’s a feeling, I think, that in the digital age, information is a commodity that’s just available — and there’s not always a sense of how it’s generated or produced,” he said.

Starkly, the report asks, “If television has focused on covering weather, traffic, and breaking news, and that is what people look to this platform for, will television begin to cover taxes and zoning and education if the local newspaper no longer exists?”

Separately, Pew’s annual survey of news media performance, released last week, reaffirmed public distrust of the news media as an institution. By several Pew measures, the public perception has never been lower. Of those surveyed, 80 percent said they thought the news media were often influenced by powerful people and groups; 77 percent said the media tend to favor one side; and 72 percent said reporters try to cover up their mistakes.

But in a twist this year, Pew, a nonprofit group, asked about the news sources people use most. The public seemed to have a more favorable view of those sources, much as the public overwhelmingly disapproves of Congress, but individuals approve of their local members of Congress.

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