WASHINGTON, March 17: Newspapers gained readers last year, confounding analysts who have predicted they would continue to lose ground as more people switch to the Internet to get their news, a report issued on Monday said.

“Critics have tended to see technology democratising the media and traditional journalism in decline,” the report by Pew Research’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said.“Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before,” it said.

From 10 years ago, when the “newsroom was often regarded as the root of journalism’s disconnection from the public,” it has evolved to being perceived as the innovative and experimental part of the news industry, said the report.

Enhancing the image of the newsroom are “such things as journalists writing blogs, the ranking of stories on their websites, citizens posting comments or ranking stories, even citizen news sites,” said the report, which looked at more than 70,000 stories from newspapers, websites, network television, cable television and radio.

While daily newspaper circulation fell 2.5 per cent last year, readership for dailies more than doubled in 2007, the report said. “If you add in the unduplicated audience of a newspaper’s website (people who do not also read the print edition), which typically is growing at a healthy rate, you get a picture of the ‘total audience’ for newspaper organisations growing, not declining,” the report said.

“Old media” have gone from simply replicating their print-form news on the Internet to creating innovative, interactive sites, the report said.

Indeed, newspapers have become major players on the Internet: the website of The New York Times ranks fifth overall among news sites, with 14.7 million visitors a month, the report says, citing one example.—AFP