The Newspaper Association of America finds some positive news in the number of Americans coming to newspaper websites.

About one in three Internet users -- or 55 million Americans -- visit a newspaper website every month (question: Where do they get their daily news?). Unique visitor stats and page views went up 21 per cent and 43 per cent respectively over the course of 2005.

An excerpt from the AP story on USA Today:

Andrew Swinand, executive vice president at Starcom Worldwide, a major advertising-buying agency, said during a panel discussion that newspapers could do more to harness their presence online, such as getting more participation from audiences.

Swinand also said his firm would like to buy advertising across newspaper websites but had difficulty doing so, and had to go through third-party vendors. He also said it was difficult to buy both print and online advertising through newspapers, and that the process for fulfilling newspaper ad sales was cumbersome and less automated than in other media.

Swinand did say afterward that he was still "bullish" on newspapers' online advertising potential, but added that newspapers should do more to personalize and localize their online content, in ways such as the social networking site MySpace does.