The BBC's flagship news show is preparing to replace its review of the day's printed newspapers with a round-up mixing stories found in traditional publications with headlines from online news sources and coverage by foreign media outlets.

The change to Radio 4's Today programme is due to be announced shortly, according to an internal memo obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The breakfast programme – which shapes the daily news agenda for most UK politicians and much of the British news media – currently features two substantial newspaper round-ups during every three-hour show. The programme has recently hit record high numbers of listeners, reaching 7.6 million Britons a week.

Ensuring a story appears on the Today programme is an easy way to reach the ears of the prime minister, cabinet ministers, and journalists at other outlets. As a result, the current system helps perpetuate the influence of newspapers despite the majority of publications suffering from severely declining print readerships in recent years.

The decision will open up a new debate over which outlets count as "the media" in 2017, whether there is a such a thing as a homogenous, easily summarised news agenda in modern Britain, and which websites are credible enough to be included in round-ups.

The show's paper review currently includes headlines and lead comment pieces from printed national newspapers, which tend to skew towards right-leaning publications – often ensuring substantial coverage on the radio for pro-Brexit, pro-Conservative headlines from the likes of the Daily Express, which rarely go viral.

The most popular online publications tend to be more left-wing, meaning the new feature could result in far more pro-Labour headlines appearing on the nation's agenda-setting radio programme.

Newspaper reviews, which remain a prominent feature of UK broadcast news on radio and TV, have become a regular target of new pro-Corbyn online outlets such as Another Angry Voice, The Canary, and Evolve Politics. These sites believe their growing readership has earned them the right to be heard and debated on a national scale. The author of Another Angry Voice has previously told BuzzFeed News he considers himself to be more of a campaigner than a traditional journalist, although his coverage was reaching millions of people during the election.

There have also been complaints that the existing system of reading out newspaper headlines results in newspapers being given credit for stories that were first reported by online news outlets – and ensures certain political columnists receive more coverage when online pieces may have been read far more widely.

During the general election Labour's shadow trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, attacked the programme on air for reading out headlines from The Sun, the UK's biggest-selling newspaper.

