Newspaper Web site traffic grew by 11 percent year-over-year in October to 39.3 million unique visitors, indicating that the traditional media is alive on the Internet, despite declining readership offline, a research firm said Tuesday.

More than 1 in 4 of the active U.S. Internet population visited a newspaper Web site last month, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The New York Times led the pack with 11.4 million visitors to its site, followed by USA Today and The Washington Post, with 10.4 million and 8.1 million, respectively.

Rounding out the top five were the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle with 3.9 million visitors apiece.

The research followed on the heels of last weeks report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which found a six-month decline in the average weekday print circulation among the top 20 U.S. newspapers.

This report offers some real reasons as to why online news is growing and where it may be heading in the future.

[ Continue reading courtesy of techweb.com ]