BEIJING, Oct. 27 (Xinhuanet)-- U.S. newspaper circulation is falling at an accelerated pace as publishers raised subscription fees to counter tumbling ad revenue and more readers defected to Internet for free information.

    Daily average circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to about 30.4 million copies in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008, according to the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations Monday.

    That was greater than the 7.1 percent decline in the October 2008-March 2009 period and the 4.6 percent drop in the April-September period of 2008.

    The Wall Street Journal has surpassed USA Today as the top-selling newspaper in the United States.

    USA Today saw its worst decline ever, dropping more than 17 percent to 1.90 million. The newspaper has blamed reductions in travel for much of the circulation shortfall, because many of its single-copy sales come in airports and hotels.

    The New York Times stayed in third place at 927,851, down 7.3 percent from the same period of 2008.

    Newspaper sales have been declining since the early 1990s, but the drop has accelerated in recent years. The reasons behind this may be many-fold. On one hand, this is because newspapers have stopped serving harder-to-reach areas and limited circulation to their core regions. On the other hand, some papers are also raising prices, relying on readers to generate a bigger share of revenues than in the past.

    Furthermore, in many cases, people simply aren't buying print copies as much as they used to, given the abundance of free news on the Internet, often from the newspapers themselves.

    "With no sign of meaningful improvement in newspaper advertising trends, and accelerating declines in circulation, we remain concerned about the outlook for newspaper companies," said Alexia Quadrani, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst, was quoted as saying in a note.

(Agencies)