Every file accessed to put together the page is one hit. Each page in a site requires several 'hits' to load completely. Page Views is the number of actual pages within the site that were viewed during the period. This statistic is a great indicator of the desirability of the content within a website. The higher the ratio between visitors and Page Views, the more content that visitors are accessing.
Visitors is the total number of people that came to the website during the period.
When making a decision about your involvement with a website, ask them to show you their stats to verify what they are saying is correct. While NewsChannel9 and WRCB are open about traffic, others will not want you to see theirs for obvious reasons. Be careful about misleading on-site counters. For example, one local media outlet uses a visible counter that appears to record the number of visitors to their site, but a closer look through the site shows that the same counter is on every page of the site. That means that the same visitor gets counted again every time they go to a different page of the website.