26% of online Americans visit newspaper sites

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that newspaper Web sites grew 11% YTY to 39.3 mln unique visitors in October 2005, comprising 26% of the active US Internet population. The 11% increase exceeds the growth of the active Internet universe as a whole, which rose 3% YTY. 22% have shifted their readership preferences from offline to online sources. The majority of readers, 71%, still prefer print newspapers, while 7% divide their time evenly between the two sources.