Forbes and Bitly joined forces to determine how Americans consume news media, and the results are telling.

Forbes published an interactive map that shows which media outlets are most popular across the nation, and the specific headlines that were most read by residents of each state. Interestingly, a related Forbes article notes, “Bitly’s research ... confirms some dearly-held stereotypes about media consumption: NPR is popular in Oregon and Minnesota; Fox News is popular in Mississippi.”

Sure, it makes sense that the Washington Post is most popular among residents in and around Washington, D.C., and Fox News is a favorite in the deep South, but it might come as a surprise to see which states adore The Onion, and that NPR is not very popular in New York.

This Bitly statement (via Forbes) explains how the interactive map works:

“When you share or click a link on a social network like Facebook or Twitter, you’re most likely using a Bitly link. Bitly provides the infrastructure for social sharing across networks and, in the middle, collects a huge amount of data on how real people share ideas. Given the right tools, and by asking the right questions, this mass of clicks can be transformed into useful knowledge about the social web, helping us understand how people use the Internet.

For Forbes, Bitly has investigated how people consume news by looking at how people in different states differ in their preference for news sites. Through the clicks of millions of people in each state visiting different news sources, Bitly is able to uncover relationships between geography and media.”