Newspapers Own 9 Of Top 20 News Sites

Posted Thursday, November 21, 2002 12:00 am

By: Carl Sullivan Nine of the top 20 news Web sites in the U.S. during October were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings.

For the first time, Nielsen/NetRatings is counting audiences at the news sections of America Online's proprietary paid membership service. Previously, the data firm only tracked visitors to AOL's free Web news sections. Because of this change, AOL News now ranks No. 3 with 16,481,000 unique users. In September, AOL News ranked at No. 19, with only 2,066,000 visitors to its free Web news sections.

The top news sites in terms of audience for October were CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL News, Yahoo! News and ABCNews.com. The top newspaper site was NYTimes.com, which ranked 6th, followed by Gannett's online properties at 7th, USAToday.com at 8th, and washingtonpost.com in 9th place.

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.

A number of newspaper-affiliated sites also showed up in the top 20 directories/local guides category as ranked by Nielsen/NetRatings. In that list, the top three sites were Yahoo! Get Local, Superpages.com, and switchboard.com. The complete table is below.

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)

CNN General News	21,168	0:30:45
MSNBC	19,648	0:28:46
AOL News	16,481	0:24:11
Yahoo! News	16,031	0:23:30
ABC News	10,036	0:13:43
New York Times	9,254	0:37:13
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	8,419	0:16:21
USA Today	6,805	0:24:57
Washington Post	6,797	0:23:15
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	5,568	0:19:52
MSN Slate	4,726	0:13:38
McClatchy Newspapers	3,961	0:17:07
Hearst Newspapers Digital	3,923	0:21:14
Fox News	3,753	0:32:18
Time Magazine	3,718	0:05:14
WorldNow	3,122	0:08:55
The Boston Globe	2,248	0:26:47
NYP Holdings (NY Post)	2,239	0:12:52
drudgereport.com	2,144	0:57:48
Cox Newspapers	2,065	0:21:09

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)

Yahoo! Get Local	15,517	0:11:36
Superpages.com	8,241	0:08:01
switchboard.com	4,927	0:07:09
Citysearch	4,842	0:15:09
US Search.com	4,808	0:03:39
SMARTpages	4,209	0:05:22
Yahoo! People	4,184	0:03:36
MSN City Guides	3,408	0:02:25
Whitepages.com	3,145	0:03:38
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,884	0:14:15
MSN Yellow Pages	2,353	0:00:59
Government Guide	1,885	0:03:56
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,412	0:23:57
QwestDex.com	1,324	0:08:01
nj.com (Advance)	1,231	0:09:50
TBO.com (Tampa Tribune)	890	0:04:10
About Cities and Towns	807	0:02:12
areaguides.net	604	0:03:09
Zagat Survey	591	0:13:55
mlive.com (Advance)	582	0:16:31
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. October 2002

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Newspapers Own 9 Of Top 20 News Sites

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