By: E&P Staff Eight of the top 20 news Web sites or groups in the U.S. during May were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen//NetRatings.
The top sites in Nielsen//NetRatings' Current Events & Global News category were Yahoo! News, CNN, MSNBC, AOL News, and Gannett Newspapers (excluding USA Today).
Three individual newspaper sites were in the top 20: NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and washingtonpost.com. Newspaper chains on the list included Gannett Co. Inc., Knight Ridder, The New York Times Co., Tribune Co., Hearst Corp., and Advance Publications Inc.
Nielsen//NetRatings classifies news Web sites according to the media companies' preferences; thus, some newspaper Web sites are counted individually in these rankings, while others are aggregated for a newspaper chainwide ranking. If The New York Times Co. aggregated NYTimes.com (9 million unique users) and boston.com (3.5 million), it would rank fourth on this list, ahead of Gannett.
The rankings of current events and news sites were based on a panel of 60,000-plus Americans accessing the Web at work and home.
The largest newspaper site, NYTimes.com, had over 9 million unique visitors last month, followed by USAToday.com with nearly 8 million, and washingtonpost.com with 6.7 million.
Some of the largest newspaper Web sites which didn't make this top 20 list were newsday.com (3.4 million uniques), sfgate.com (3.3 million), and azcentral.com (2.4 million).
One newspaper chain, E.W. Scripps, ranked in the top 20 of another Nielsen//NetRatings list -- the directories/local guides category. All of Scripps Newspapers' sites combined had 1.9 million unique users last month.
Nielsen//NetRatings is a joint service of VNU-owned Nielsen and NetRatings, which is majority-owned by VNU, the parent company of
E&P.
Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites
|
| Unique Audience | Time Per Person |
| Brand or Channel | (000) | (hh:mm:ss) |
|
| Yahoo! News | 23,050 | 0:27:03 |
| CNN | 22,316 | 0:34:56 |
| MSNBC | 21,124 | 0:17:53 |
| AOL News | 13,503 | 0:43:02 |
| Gannett Newspapers | 11,092 | 0:12:41 |
| Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc. | 9,794 | 0:15:07 |
| Knight Ridder Digital | 9,524 | 0:10:41 |
| NYTimes.com | 9,027 | 0:43:09 |
| Tribune Newspapers | 8,772 | 0:14:44 |
| USAToday.com | 7,965 | 0:13:38 |
| ABCNews Digital | 7,700 | 0:11:57 |
| Google News | 6,844 | 0:08:53 |
| washingtonpost.com | 6,690 | 0:21:32 |
| CBS News | 6,067 | 0:07:36 |
| Associated Press | 6,010 | 0:05:08 |
| Hearst Newspapers Digital | 5,945 | 0:12:38 |
| Fox News | 5,717 | 0:36:51 |
| BBC News | 5,514 | 0:07:59 |
| WorldNow | 4,858 | 0:07:32 |
| Advance Internet | 4,568 | 0:09:11 |
| Source: Nielsen//NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. May 2004 |
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