USA Today follows up on a recent analysis by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) of Audit Bureau of Circulations data from 770 daily newspapers across the country. The key finding: in the six months ending March 31, average weekday circulation fell 2.5%, to 45.4 million vs. the same period last year.

The hardest hit big city papers: The San Francisco Chronicle, down 15.6%; The Boston Globe, down 8.5%; The Boston Herald , down 9.1%; The Los Angeles Times, down 5.4%, and the Los Angeles Daily News, down 11.9%.

Still, the piece notes, some high-profile papers saw circulation increases: USA Today, up 0.1% to 2.27 million, The New York Times, up 0.5% to 1.14 million; and The Chicago Tribune, up 0.9% to 579,079.

Also noted: "Nielsen/NetRatings data showing that an average of 56 million Web users visited a newspaper site in each of the first three months of 2006, up 8% from the same period in 2005."

Joe Garofoli writes, in SFGate.com, in a piece that includes mention of Backfence.com, on how the shift from old media to new media is impacting the Bay Area: "The only thing old- and new-media types agree on is that this is a moment of immense transition. It's particularly difficult because nobody can claim to have a definitive profile of online reading habits -- other than that people are going to multiple sites."