The poll claimed that even international news sites, like the bbc.com, are preferred to local TV and newspapers in US schools by teachers who frequently rely on the internet for news.
Fifty-seven per cent of the teachers surveyed for the poll said they frequently used internet-based news in the classroom, roughly twice the proportion that used national television news or the daily newspapers on a frequent basis.
The research into the use of news in the classroom, conducted by the Carnegie-Knight task force at Harvard University, also found that US schools are relying on increasingly fewer sources of internet-based news - with CNN, PBS, and The New York Times dominating.
"Since the nation's founding, the community story, as told by local newspapers, has been an everyday part of Americans' experience," said Professor Thomas Patterson, survey director.
"In America's classrooms, this story is shrinking as a result of teachers' preference for internet-based news."
Professor Patterson noted that several newspapers, including the Denver Post and the Louisville Courier-Journal, had launched e-editions for classroom use. He added that more recently the Idaho Press-Tribune had began a program to get its e-edition into half of the middle and high schools within its circulation area.
However, he said that local newspapers were not properly addressing the threat of internet sources.
"We found that newspapers are only dimly aware that they are losing ground in the classroom," said Professor Patterson.
"In fact, very few are making a substantial effort to promote their websites in the schools. They continue to market the hard copy of the newspaper, despite evidence that many of today's young people are not interested in it."
More than 1,250 social studies, civics, and government teachers of grades five to 12 and several hundred newspaper-in-education program directors at daily newspapers were polled for the survey.
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