Newspapers Run 8 of Top 20 News Sites

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

The top news sites in terms of audience for January were MSNBC.com, AOL News, Yahoo! News, CNN General News, and ABCNews.com. When aggregated, Gannett's newspaper sites ranked 6th, followed by NYTimes.com at 7th, washingtonpost.com in 9th place, and USAToday.com in 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.

Four 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 US Search.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)
MSNBC	18,174	0:22:53
AOL News	17,064	0:24:29
Yahoo! News	16,297	0:21:08
CNN General News	15,271	0:30:51
ABC News	8,772	0:11:48
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	7,780	0:16:42
NYTimes.com	7,690	0:39:14
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	6,731	0:13:21
washingtonpost.com	6,056	0:20:25
USAToday.com	5,984	0:22:26
MSN Slate	4,521	0:09:24
Hearst Newspapers Digital	4,252	0:17:22
McClatchy Newspapers	3,771	0:15:53
WorldNow	3,589	0:10:55
CBS News	3,554	0:08:35
Time Magazine	3,450	0:05:11
Fox News	2,940	0:35:35
The Boston Globe	2,728	0:21:43
Netscape News	2,656	0:06:27
LA Times	2,586	0:17:57

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Yahoo! Get Local	14,948	0:09:39
Superpages.com	8,227	0:06:41
US Search.com	5,375	0:03:38
Citysearch	5,218	0:08:21
switchboard.com	4,474	0:07:56
Yahoo! People	4,172	0:03:20
SMARTpages	3,200	0:05:09
Whitepages.com	3,041	0:04:58
MSN City Guides	2,960	0:02:14
MSN Yellow Pages	2,520	0:01:10
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,298	0:12:50
Government Guide	2,209	0:04:08
AOL Yellow Pages	2,121	0:05:27
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,812	0:14:21
Yellowpages.com	1,512	0:05:03
QwestDex.com	1,330	0:07:57
nj.com (Advance Publications)	1,052	0:09:08
About Cities and Towns	939	0:02:37
TBO.com	774	0:08:12
reversephonedirectory.com	737	0:02:27
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. January 2003