According to an article run on WebProNews this week, newspaper web sites attracted an average monthly unique audience of 72 million visitors in the 4th quarter of 2009. This number represents about 37% of all Internet users.

This data came from a custom analysis by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. Newspaper web sites users generated more than 3.2 billion page views during the quarter while spending more than 2.4 billion minutes on these sites.

The data also found that the average time spent per person on newspaper web sites during the fourth quarter varied. In October, users spent an average of 34 minutes and 14 seconds on these types of web sites. In November it was 32 minutes and 44 seconds. In December it was up to 34 minutes and 52 seconds.