News advertisers are shifting ad budgets from traditional print, TV and radio to online news portals, according to the "State of the News Media 2006" report from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, cable TV news the exception, writes MediaPost. The report notes that newspaper revenue has increased 1-2 percent - but largely due to a 30 percent increase in online news portals' ad revenue.

More readers will likely be driven to online news - and will be followed there by ad revenue, although that's still bad news for newspapers, says Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine, according to whom papers earn 20-30 cents in ad revenue per online reader, compared with a dollar for print.

Moreover, the Columbia report notes that 20-30 percent growth rates for online news ad spend is not sustainable for long.