BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- A record number of readers visited U.S. online newspaper sites in 2007, growing about 6 percent, which resulted in the declining of the revenue of the traditional print advertising, media reported Friday.

    Websites run by newspapers had an average of 60 million unique U.S. visitors per month in 2007, up from 56.4 million the year before, according to data released by Newspaper Association of America(NAA) and compiled by Nielsen Online, a Web audience measurement agency owned by The Nielsen Co.

    It said that during the fourth quarter, 39 percent of all active Web users visited newspaper Web sites, with visits averaging 44 minutes a month.

    Many newspapers have been adding online features such as video, blogs, jazzier graphics, online community features and links to other websites in an effort to lure in more readers and compete with other outlets of information online, including blogs and portals like Yahoo Inc.

    "News organizations were very aggressive in 2007 in adapting new tools to their sites," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Everyboy's adding either connections to blogs as well as encouraging some staffers to blog themselves."

    Revenues from online advertising have been growing at newspapers, but not yet fast enough to replace the declines in their traditional print advertising business.

    Total newspaper advertising revenue fell 7.4 percent in the third quarter of 2007, the latest period for which the NAA has reported figures. Within that total, print ad revenues declined 9 percent to 10.1 billion U.S. dollars, while online revenues rose 21 percent to 773 million dollars, according to the NAA.

    (Agencies)