More than 123 million Americans visited newspaper sites in May, representing 57 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience, says comScore. The site category ranking, which counts newspaper corporate groups in addition to national newspapers, is the first collective ranking in which all of the individual participants have transitioned to the comScore Media Metrix 360 “Unified Digital Measurement” methodology.

The name may be new, but where “newspaper roll-ups” are concerned, that’s a process that’s been underway for several years. And, the results aren’t that surprising. The New York Times Brand led the category with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pages viewed during the month. The average visitor viewed 22 pages of content on the New York Times, also leading the top ten. Tribune Newspapers ranked second in terms of audience with 24.8 million visitors, followed by Advance Internet (18.1 million visitors) and USA Today Sites (16.8 million visitors).

Jeff Hackett, comScore senior VP said, “The good news for publishers is that even as print circulation declines, Americans are actually consuming as much news as ever – it’s just being consumed across more media.” The Internet is now an “essential channel in the way the majority of Americans consume news content today with nearly 3 out of 5 Internet users reading newspapers online each month.”

In a week where the survival of the news industry in general has been under scrutiny, Hackett said, “As news evolves towards a more digital model, the issue is not attracting the eyeballs, but rather demonstrating the true value of those eyeballs to advertisers. As advertising rates for digital move closer into line with those of traditional media, the economics of the news business should begin to look a lot more promising.”

On that score, comScore’s other index, Ad Metrix, shows newspapers outperform other categories for the fees they’re able to charge for online advertising. Specifically, among the top site categories where display ads appeared in April 2010, online newspapers accounted for 2.4 percent of impressions but a higher 6.7 percent of display advertising dollars. The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on online newspaper sites was $7, higher than each of the other top site categories and nearly three times the average CPM for the total U.S. Internet at $2.52, comScore said.