Online newspapers are in deep trouble. As newspaper owners install paywalls and charge readers for news, research puts the issue in perspective. Statistics from NAA Nielsen show newspapers own less than one percent of the time US web users spend online.

Huge numbers of readers visit online newspaper sites, but few stay for long or read much.

Martin Langeveld who wrote the story for the Nieman Journalism Lab says this indicates online newspapers need to do more to build market share. He thinks installing newspaper paywalls and attacking aggregators is only going to harm market share.

Newspapers could fade into irrelevance if publishers don’t find ways to keep readers on-site for longer and read more pages. Ironically making readers pay for content is likely to deepen reader relationships, although with far smaller audiences.

NAA/Nielsen stats show newspapers own less than 1 percent of U.S. online audience page views, time spent