Online newspapers are helping to stem the drop in U.S. readership, according to the Biennial News Consumptions Survey 2006 by Pew Research Center.

In 1994, 58 percent of the survey respondents said they read the paper the day before. The readership continued to drop until 2006, with only 40 percent readership left.

If considering the print version only, readership dropped more seriously, from 48 percent in 1998 to 38 percent in 2008.

However, the Pew survey found that online readership declines less and helps the overall readership from plummeting. In 2006, online readership was 43 percent, higher than the print and the overall, with 38 percent and 40 percent, respectively.