WASHINGTON: The US newspaper industry is facing growing turmoil as readers and advertisers increasingly turn to newer media, pressuring some of the industry's most prominent players.

Uncertainty over the future of Tribune Co., an industry leader that owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is highlighting the shake-up in newspapers and other media.

The Chicago-based company, under pressure from shareholders, is exploring strategic options to boost the company's value, and has been entertaining interest from other media groups and private equity investors to sell all or part of the group.

This year, Knight-Ridder Newspapers was bought out and broken into several pieces, placing prestigious dailies such as the Miami Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer under new ownership.

Elsewhere in the media sector, Readers' Digest was sold this week to a private equity firm for $2.4 billion. And reports have been swirling that other papers, including the Boston Globe, now owned by the New York Times, might be up for sale.

Meanwhile, newspaper readership has been sputtering.

A recent survey showed just 49.9 per cent of US adults read a daily newspaper in 2006, down from 58.6 per cent in 1998 and a far cry from the 80.8 per cent in 1964, according to the Newspaper Association of America

The Audit Bureau of Circulation said the 770 newspapers it surveys had a combined circulation in 2006 of 43.7 million, a drop of 2.8 per cent in a year.

For Sunday papers, readership was 47.6 million, down 3.4 per cent.

By contrast, 56.9 million people visited a newspaper website at least once during September, up from 53.1 million last October.

Advertising revenues for newspapers grew just 1.5 per cent last year to $47.4 billion even though the companies saw a 31 percent jump in online advertising.

“The newspaper industry is going through a transition and it is going to be bumpy for a while,” said John Morton, a veteran industry analyst and consultant who operates Morton Research.

Morton said profit margins “will be under pressure” but that newspapers as a whole have margins that were “still quite high” of around 18 per cent this year for the major publicly traded firms.—AFP