According to a post at PaidContent, the online audience for newspapers is growing twice as fast as the overall Internet population is growing. That comes from a study that Nielsen/Net Ratings did for (not surprisingly perhaps) the Newspaper Association of America. According to the study:
An average of more than 59 million people (37.6 percent of all active internet users) visited newspapers online each month during Q1, a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
During the same time period, the overall internet audience grew just 2.7 percent.
The study also found that more than 88 per cent of newspaper website visitors have bought something online in the last six months, compared with less than 80 per cent of the online audience. And about four in 10 online readers or 40 per cent work in professional or managerial jobs, compared with one in three or 33 per cent of the Internet population).