Gannett Company Inc., the United States' largest newspaper publisher, appears to have made a relatively successful transition into online revenue generation, Seeking Alpha reported Monday. Its flagship paper, USA Today, reported a 27 percent growth in online advertising for February against this time last year.

This is the largest increase in online advertising by any national newspaper, especially amongst recession related closures, bankruptcies, staff cuts and sales. As a result Gannett's shares jumped 14 percent.

Yesterday's report, State of the Media, from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticised newspapers' inability to remodel economically amid massive consumer migration to the Internet away from traditional print media.

The Pew study pointed out newspapers' online growth failing to be supported by a business model. For example, the Tech section of USATODAY.com saw a 100 percent growth in its online audience from February 2008, registering 1.9 million unique visitors. Overall, USATODAY.com's coverage of the economic stimulus package, the Octuplet Mom, and Rihanna were some of the most viewed topics last month, Seeking Alpha reported.

Despite this success, revenue from USA Today's online operations could not outweigh the company's reliance on print advertising revenue which has been suffocated by the recession. Gannett registered a total advertising revenue decline of 18.5 percent for the final economic quarter of 2008, according to Seeking Alpha.