As print news organizations, amid declining circulation and revenue, embrace the internet, they find themselves in a competitive landscape of customer acquisition and churn complexity that's intertwined with other news and content sites, search engines and email, according to a Hitwise study released today. Some 26.2 percent of all visits to websites in the "News & Media - Print" category originated from another news site (both non-print and print-affiliated), according to the Hitwise study, which covered the four-week period ending May 21.

Moreover, 18.8 percent of visits to print-affiliated news sites came directly from search engines and directories, 9.0 percent from entertainment sites and 7.2 percent from web email services. While print-news sites receive significant traffic from other news sites, they also lose more visitors (25.8 percent) to them versus any other site category.

Furthermore, news is no longer bound by geography, the Hitwise study finds. While the audience reach of print news has historically been limited to a core geographic location, the web transcends that barrier. For example, the New York Times website received 72.2 percent of its U.S. traffic from visitors outside New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The Washington Post site received 68.6 percent of its U.S. traffic from outside Virginia, Maryland and Washington. The San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times sites received approximately half of their web traffic - 50.4 percent and 43.84 percent, respectively - from outside of California.