The New York Times reports more bad news for major U.S. newspapers:

• a 2.1 percent drop in weekday circulation during the six-month period ending March 31, compared with the same time a
  year earlier
• a 3.1 percent drop on
  Sundays over the same period

But the online trend is encouraging, according to the Newspaper Association of America:

• More than 59 million people visited newspaper Web sites in the first quarter
  of 2007, a 5.3 percent increase over
  the same period a year ago.
• Visitors to newspaper sites generated nearly three billion
  page views per month throughout the quarter, compared with 2.7
  billion last year.

The association says the figures are the highest for any quarter since it began keeping track of newspaper Web sites in 2004.