• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, August 5, 2009

Some 70.3 million people -- or about 35.9% of all Internet users in the U.S. -- visited a newspaper Web site in June, according to the Newspaper Association of America, which cited a custom analysis by Nielsen Online. These visitors generated 3.5 billion page views in 597 million sessions, with a total visit duration of 2.7 billion minutes.

The unique visitors figure represents a 7% increase over June 2008, when newspaper Web sites attracted 65.4 million unique visitors per month.

Page views and the number of sessions both increased about 11.5%, from 3.14 billion and 534.5 million, respectively. Conversely, the average time spent by individuals decreased slightly, from 40 minutes 23 seconds to about 38 minutes 25 seconds. And in percentage terms, the slice of the total proportion of Internet users who visited newspaper Web sites also decreased 39.9% from June 2008 numbers.

These apparent decreases may be the result of a new methodology introduced by Nielsen Online; the NAA warned that statistical comparisons between this report and previous ones may not be valid. But if the total Internet population figures are valid, according to Nielsen Online, the total number of American Internet users increased from about 165 million in the second quarter of 2008 to 196 million this year.

In the second quarter of 2007, the NAA and Nielsen said that an average 59 million people visited newspaper Web sites per month, representing 37.3% of the U.S. Internet population -- implying a total Internet population of about 158 million.

In any event, the continuing success of newspapers in attracting online audiences only serves to highlight their continuing failure to monetize these audiences effectively.

According to the NAA, newspapers' Internet revenues totaled $696 million in the first quarter of 2009, the most recent for which figures are available. That's just over 10% of the total $6.6 billion. Total print and online revenues fell by $2.6 billion from the first quarter of 2008.