By PHOEBE FITZ

As newspaper circulation drops, more and more people are turning for the Internet for their news.

Online subscriptions to newspapers such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are on the rise, but online papers aren’t the only place news-hungry people are turning to for their information.

Blogs, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly turned to for updates on the current state of affairs. With approximately 87 million tumblr blogs, one billion active monthly Facebook users and Twitter’s 20 million users that send almost 400 million tweets per day, it is abundantly clear how social media is transmitting news and information.

Many actual journalists use these tweets and Facebook updates in their stories as information, which can potentially lead to misinformation since these sources are not fact-checked and could possibly be unreliable. But, they could also be spot-on and a great asset.

The rise of social media has led to a rise of self-created journalists and journalist assistants, if you will.

The news isn’t in our hands now, but right at our fingertips.