Here’s what a team at the Missouri School of Journalism learned in a survey of 1,609 Apple (AAPL) iPad owners conducted over the past three months:

• Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses.
• More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Among the 931 respondents who indicated that they currently subscribe to print newspapers, there is a statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlation between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling their print subscriptions. (emphasis ours)
• For example, more than half (58.1%) of the respondents who subscribe to printed newspapers and use their iPad at least an hour a day for news said they are very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within the next six months.
• More than three out of 10 (30.6%) respondents indicated that they do not subscribe to printed newspapers, with another one out of 10 (10.7%) saying that they had already canceled their subscriptions to printed newspapers and switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.

The typical iPad owner who responded to the survey was a 48-year-old man with a B.A. earning more than $100,000 a year who bought his iPad within two months of its release.

To read the full report, click here.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]