Google is now playing an increasingly critical role in the business of newspapers – it accounted for almost two-thirds of search traffic going to U. S. newspaper Web sites in March, according to data from Hitwise.

People are heading online for news in larger numbers, and more and more of them start at a news aggregate site such as Google News or Yahoo! News. These sites do not actually produce content, but direct users to other sites, according to Josh Cohen, head of business development at Google News, at the Newspaper Association conference in Toronto last week.

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The Liverpool Daily Post on Tuesday offered its readers a chance to influence what will be in Wednesday's newspaper, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Tuesday.

A team at the newspaper hosted a live blog throughout the day, updating readers on breaking news stories, and welcoming them to log in to give comments or suggestions on the content or design of Wednesday's paper, as well as to ask the journalists questions.

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Global media reporting site Followthemedia will close May 16 unless €35,000 is raised, the group announced on its Web site.

Followthemedia has been reporting on media issues for four years, and counts 1.5 million visitors.

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The idea that “free” news on the Internet is the cause for current financial woes in journalism is incorrect; on the contrary, a lot of money is generated by the news, very little of which makes it back to news providers, wrote Peter Osnos, senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation on Tuesday.

The fact that content creators are not receiving a fair amount is “no longer tolerable,” Osnos stated. “News is no more free these days than the 'complementary' bag of pretzels you get on a plane, after you’ve paid for the ticket.”

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Newsknife, a site that rates news sites based on Google News performance, has released its May 2008 list of 155 sites in the U.S.

The site sampled 109,702 listings by 3,942 sites for 689 news items in 2008, and judged performance based on how often they appeared on Google News.

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The Baltimore Sun Media Group Interactive (BSMG) has launched a new local Web site, bringing together local newspapers to create the site, Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

ExploreHoward.com is a service of Patuxent Publishing and BSMG, and contains complete weekly content from Howard County's the Columbia Flier, Howard County Times, The View from Ellicott City and The View from Western Howard County.

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Media Wales will not go through with its plan to launch a Welsh-language news Web site, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Friday.

Media Wales publishes the Western Mail and other south Wales titles.

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Business researcher Henry Blodget on Wednesday predicted in his online column that U.S. print newspaper circulation will drop to about 50 million this year – the lowest it has been since 1946. As circulation drops to extreme lows in a period in which the U.S. population has doubled, this means “per-capita newspaper consumption has been cut in half,” Blodget stated.

So where are all the ad dollars going? Online, of course.

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The Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) may report mobile traffic to its member Web sites in the future, and is currently considering the move, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.

ABCe will discuss how metrics, which are approved by Joint Industry Commission for Web Standards (JICWEBS), would be enacted to best measure and report mobile traffic.

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The U.S. online newspaper audience has grown from 38.97 million in December 2004 to 63.05 million in December 2007, an increase of more than 60 percent over three years, according to the MegaPanel Data from Nielsen Online.

Active reach for online newspapers has also risen, from 26 percent in December 2004 to over 38 percent in December 2007.

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Telegraph.co.uk saw user numbers increase by five million last month, thanks in large part to improved back-end technology, higher news production and strong content, the Telegraph has stated, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

Unique users to the Telegraph's Web site increased by 38.7 percent from February to March, to more than 17 million, the Telegraph reported.

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The Grand Island (Nebraska) Independent used new live blogging tool CovertItLive in a new way – to launch the redesign of its Web site using input from readers, Journalism.co.uk reported Monday.

Following the site's relaunch, the paper began using the blogging tool to start a live question and answer session between readers and the Web staff last week.

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Only 11 of the top 30 U.S. newspaper Web sites reported an increase in the time spent per person in March, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online.

Those sites with big gains included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Online, Village Voice Media, the Houston Chronicle, and Politico, Editor & Publisher reported.

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Mirror Group Newspapers is leaning towards becoming the most recent newspaper group to publish its Internet traffic data within the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) figures, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

On Thursday, MGN Web sites will be included in ABCe monthly traffic figures for the first time.

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The New York Times announced Tuesday that it plans to deliver content to the Chumby, a portable, coffee cup-sized wireless device designed for consumers who wish to access a condensed version online, Media Week reported.

The Chumby, designed and launched last year by Chumby Industries, is twice-size of an alarm clock and a mini-multimedia device. Users can use it to view photos, stream videos, and surf on their social networks, among other functions.

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