Newspapers Run 5 of Top 10 Web News Domains

By: Eight of the top 20 news Web sites or groups in the U.S. during April were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen//NetRatings. Newspapers owned half of the top 10 spots.

The top sites in Nielsen//NetRatings' Current Events & Global News category were MSNBC, CNN, Yahoo! News, AOL News, and NYTimes.com. When aggregated, Gannett's newspaper sites (with the exception of USAToday.com) ranked 6th. Counted separately by Nielsen//NetRatings, USA Today's Web site ranked 13th.

Nielsen//NetRatings classifies news Web sites according to the media companies' preferences; thus, some newspaper Web sites are counted separately in these rankings, while others are aggregated for a single newspaper chainwide ranking.

Other aggregated newspaper groups included in the top 20 were Knight Ridder Digital, Tribune Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers Digital, and McClatchy Newspapers. Washingtonpost.com ranked 10th.

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.

Three newspaper-affiliated sites also showed up in the top 20 directories/local guides category as ranked by Nielsen//NetRatings. 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)
MSNBC	21,774	0:31:58
CNN	20,981	0:35:39
Yahoo! News	17,153	0:34:32
AOL News	15,219	0:34:40
NYTimes.com	9,969	0:35:08
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	8,530	0:13:58
Knight Ridder Digital	8,241	0:11:53
Tribune Newspapers	7,798	0:18:24
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	7,210	0:13:28
washingtonpost.com	6,046	0:26:09
ABC News	5,970	0:10:45
Fox News	5,941	0:51:04
USAToday.com	5,858	0:20:17
MSN Slate	4,650	0:10:50
Hearst Newspapers Digital	4,637	0:14:56
BBC World Service	4,384	0:12:03
McClatchy Newspapers	4,284	0:13:32
Time Magazine	4,249	0:05:03
CBS News	3,929	0:10:24
WorldNow	3,258	0:07:36

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Yahoo! Get Local	15,992	0:09:00
Superpages.com	7,102	0:06:18
Time Warner Cable	5,183	0:20:03
Switchboard.com	5,165	0:07:40
Citysearch	4,195	0:09:08
Yahoo! People	4,140	0:03:35
US Search.com	3,835	0:03:26
SMARTpages	3,258	0:04:06
Whitepages.com	2,888	0:04:45
Government Guide	2,520	0:03:58
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,467	0:09:52
MSN Yellow Pages	2,384	0:01:01
AOL Yellow Pages	2,259	0:05:24
Yellowpages.com	1,547	0:06:05
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,390	0:13:24
QwestDex.com	1,332	0:07:31
About Cities and Towns	861	0:01:55
nj.com (Advance Publications)	746	0:18:41
reversephonedirectory.com	654	0:01:52
Yellowpages-ads.com	611	0:00:52
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. April 2003