What else do you see in the layouts, I think your right on the leading, but standards of type size will stay 9-10pt.
The broadsheet Toronto Star changed about a month ago. The body typesize is larger — the announcement blurb mentioned the size, but I can't recall to what. It appears to be larger than 10, but no type sizes have been cast in stone since PageMaker was all the rage, so it might be something like 10.2 or larger on 11.1 or more.
The serif body type was changed, as well, to something with a touch heavier strokes, as I recall. I don't subscribe so I didn't personally notice the change, other than reading the blurb that also mentioned a one-inch reduction in page width to save money on newsprint. I think the gutters were made wider, too, so the column widths would have to have been shrunk. The head type was changed; probably a touch more condensed.
Larger type and narrower page width means a lot in total word count. A lot less can fit on a page or in a given news hole. Each can represent a financial hit, and in combination moreso. To mitigate that, it also means less story.
But readability is considered more important — different reasons for different age groups but the same changes target both — so the trend continues. The broadsheet Globe and Mail did the same a couple of years ago, and the tabloid Toronto Sun six months or a year ago.
Some layout differences are change for the sake of change, but none of them decrease readability, especially for the ageing baby-boomer set that represents a paper's largest income generator.
There's a big difference in audience age between newspapers and websites. But that's changing, too. A person who discovered the web at age 30 is now 45, and someone who's been online since age 45 or 50 is now 60 and 65, so both audiences are growing and converging. Fifteen years ago, anyone 60 or older regularly or even occaisonally using the web would be a relative rarity. Now there are millions.