Will their online sites save newspapers? Not so much.

The newspaper in printed form is swiftly approaching obsolescence, as evidenced by Detroit's decision to curtail daily delivery.

One school of thought contends that online news sites will save the day, albeit at greatly reduced revenue levels.

Editor & Publisher has the bad news, which refutes that notion. Online news sites are rapidly deteriorating.

...most newspaper Web sites experienced a drop-off in the number of unique visitors [from November to] December. The same can be said for the average time spent per user... Politico and the Detroit News suffered. About four minutes were nicked off Politico’s average time spent from November to December while Detroit was down about 5 minutes.

The NYTimes.com shed about three minutes from November to December.

...Those sites where visitors lingered longer on average: Washingtonpost.com, Boston.com, SFGate.com, and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, among others...

Site -- Dec. ’08 -- Nov. ’08
NYTimes.com -- 0:33:03 -- 0:36:32
USATODAY.com -- 0:15:26 -- 0:15:58
washingtonpost.com -- 0:15:02 -- 0:14:15

LA Times -- 0:07:36 -- 0:07:07
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:10:48 -- 0:11:57
Chicago Tribune -- 0:07:27 -- 0:07:12

New York Post -- 0:10:44 -- 0:09:55
Boston.com -- 0:16:55 -- 0:13:27
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 0:14:44 -- 0:12:05

Chicago Sun-Times -- 0:06:14 -- 0:06:47
Politico -- 0:06:47 -- 0:10:45
The Houston Chronicle -- 0:19:20 -- 0:22:15

Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 0:11:35 -- 0:11:08
The Detroit News -- 0:08:41 -- 0:14:02
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 0:08:34 -- 0:08:58

DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 0:06:08 -- 0:06:10
Star Tribune -- 0:32:20 -- 0:20:32
The Washington Times -- 0:03:40 -- 0:03:46

Baltimore Sun -- 0:11:30 -- **
NJ.com -- 0:06:07 -- 0:06:37
MLive.com -- 0:08:40 -- 0:06:12

Editor & Publisher has the complete list.