The first and most major difference is freedom of choice. If I am looking for news online I can chose which articles I want to read. Television news just feeds a constant stream of regurgitated pop culture drivel mixed in with the legitimate news about world developments. There is no way to skip the noise as you can online.
The second major factor is the quality of the news. The television news I just saw was ridiculously shallow. They literally spent about 4-5 minutes speculating about the cause of Whitney Houston's death. When the segment was over I thought back about what they said and realized that there was not one useful fact or insight in what they said. It was all what ifs and possibilities. This segment was followed by "breaking" news about developments in heart repair using stem cells. I read this breaking news three days ago on the Internet and the online article went into much better detail.
Last but not least is ads. Internet ads don't interrupt you completely. They sit in the page and although some sites have ads inserted into text, or animated ads that are distracting, Internet ads are in no way as intrusive as television ads which waste your time by completely changing the topic.
I don't understand how television news plans to stay alive. If I can absorb news on the Internet faster, with fewer distracting ads, and with the freedom to chose which topics I want to read then what does television have to offer? News anchors? Most of the time I can't stand their personalities and clearly opinion laced interview language.
Compared with television news, Internet news is much more effective for getting real, timely news, with much more freedom of selection.
