Online growth is slowing for newspaper Web sites, according to June comScore data.

Wachovia Equity Research Senior Analyst John Janedis and his team wrote a note using the data, which stated unique users and page views are sluggish for companies Wachovia covers, and these new numbers “could have material impact on top line results.”

Projections for 2007 online revenue growth were lowered by Wachovia recently, from a 25 percent increase to 22 percent.

In terms of Web traffic, The New York Times Co. is outperforming its peers, with unique visitors growing 12 percent to its popular newspaper sites, such as NYTimes.com and Boston.com. Unique users at the Tribune's Web sites are up 7.8 percent over last year, while page views jumped 18.4 percent, according to the note.

The Wachovia experts also noted E.W. Scripps unique users grew 13.5 percent over last year, after declining for six months; page views, however, dropped 17.3 percent. Uniques were down 3.8 percent at Gannett, mostly due to the 12.7 percent drop at USA Today's website, Janedis and his colleagues wrote.