Newspapers Own Half Of Top 20 News Sites

By: Carl Sullivan Half of the top 20 news Web sites in the U.S. during the month of June were affiliated with newspapers, up from seven in May, according to statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings.

The top news sites in terms of audience were CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com, in that order. ABCNews.com came in 5th place, followed by Gannett's online properties and washingtonpost.com.

NYPost.com ranked at No. 11; latimes.com, No. 13; Belo Newspapers, No. 14; SFGate, No. 16; USAToday.com, No. 17; ChicagoTribune.com, No. 19; and Chicago's suntimes.com, No. 20.

The rankings of current events and news sites was 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 Superpages.com, Yahoo! Yellow Pages, and Citysearch.

E.W. Scripps Newspapers came in at No. 13;, boston.com, No. 14; NWsource.com (Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer), No. 15; nj.com (Advance Internet), No. 16; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, No. 17; and TBO.com (Media General), No. 19. (Please scroll down to see the complete top 20 lists.)

Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
CNN General News	15,719	0:26:08
MSNBC	14,322	0:30:02
Yahoo! News	12,337	0:23:12
New York Times	9,417	0:33:22
ABC News	7,798	0:11:29
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	6,475	0:14:56
washingtonpost.com	4,869	0:23:23
MSN Slate	3,430	0:14:45
Time Magazine	3,354	0:05:57
Fox News	2,706	0:31:51
NYP Holdings (New York Post)	2,575	0:12:57
CBS News	2,572	0:08:04
LA Times	2,073	0:12:45
Belo Newspapers	1,830	0:16:15
drudgereport.com	1,787	0:44:39
SF Gate	1,655	0:12:51
USA Today News	1,617	0:08:01
iWon News	1,596	0:32:16
Chicago Tribune	1,586	0:18:13
Chicago Sun-Times	1,584	0:09:22

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Superpages.com	7,999	0:07:08
Yahoo! Yellow Pages	6,555	0:09:13
Citysearch	5,029	0:10:23
switchboard.com	4,367	0:08:24
SMARTpages	4,060	0:04:48
Yahoo! People	3,919	0:03:46
US Search.com	3,756	0:04:37
Government Guide	3,205	0:03:46
Yahoo! Local	3,114	0:01:04
Whitepages.com	2,879	0:02:58
MSN City Guide	2,829	0:02:40
MSN Yellow Pages	2,588	0:01:15
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,362	0:13:40
Boston.com	2,297	0:23:18
NWsource.com	1,353	0:12:57
nj.com	1,201	0:12:22
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,075	0:19:40
areaguides.net	745	0:03:07
TBO.com	670	0:06:22
HitBox.com	636	0:01:31
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. June 2002