Latest Nielsen/NetRatings study cited by Reuters, claims that more than one-fifth of web users who read newspapers prefer online to offline editions. The study, conducted for the first time, found that 21 percent of those web users now prefer online versions of newspapers, 72 percent choose the print editions, and 7 percent split their time between the two. Visits to Yahoo News and Google News or other aggregators were not counted in the study.

NYTimes.com is the most visited U.S. newspaper site, with an audience of 11.3 million in May, up 25 percent from a year earlier, according to Nielsen. USATODAY.com was second, with an audience of 9.2 million in May, up 15 percent. Third was washingtonpost.com; its audience in May grew 10 percent year over year, to 7.4 million.

On the other hand, a separate study shows that 51 percent of the journalists use blogs regularly, with 28 percent relying on them to help in their day-to-day reporting. According to one of the pollsters, the study “demonstrates that blogs have an enormous potential to not only influence the general public, but to influence the influencers – journalists and the media.” Journalists mostly used blogs for finding story ideas (53 percent), researching and referencing facts (43 percent) and finding sources (36 percent); 33 percent said they used blogs to uncover breaking news or scandals.

Now, getting back on Earth, or more likey said, getting back to Romania, I’m really expecting that at least some of the trendy young journalists in Romania will jump in this wagon, giving the Romanian blogsphere some authority. Or what about the young journalism students?

As far as I know (and I hope I’m wrong) the only two weblogs somehow related with offline journalism are George’s Strangers on the Net and Cristi’s Netzoom (which to be honest is not actually a blog). If you guys know some more, feel free to promote them in the comments. And also another challenge: who’s blog would you like to read among romanian journalists?

And for the romanian readers also here is an interesting article on the topic, published by Lucian Mandruta in Dilema Veche, a couple of weeks ago: Freedom of the press or freedom of the public?