Over 59 million people (38% of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Websites during the first quarter of 2007, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings analysis conducted for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).
That is a 5% year-over-year increase, and a record.
News site visitors also generated nearly three billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to just under 2.7 billion during the same period last year.
The average visitor spent more than 45 minutes per month on news sites, up 12% over the first quarter of 2006.
The NAA also released its spring 2007 "Newspaper Audience Database" report on the nation's top 100 newspapers. The report included data from Scarborough Research and found that the top papers' sites drove a 14% increase in total newspaper audience for 25-34 year-olds and a 9% increase in 18-24 year-olds.