Newspapers Run Half Of Top 20 News Sites

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

The top news sites in terms of audience were CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Yahoo! News, ABCNews.com, USAToday.com, and NYTimes.com, in that order. Gannett's online properties ranked 7th and washingtonpost.com came in at No. 9.

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 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)
CNN General News	18,058	0:26:39
MSNBC	17,169	0:27:11
Yahoo! News	14,958	0:19:01
ABC News	9,162	0:11:05
USA Today	8,739	0:13:53
New York Times	8,684	0:33:04
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	7,173	0:17:35
Time Magazine	6,076	0:07:24
washingtonpost.com	5,463	0:21:06
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	5,349	0:18:17
MSN Slate	4,863	0:10:01
McClatchy Newspapers	3,720	0:12:56
Hearst Newspapers Digital	3,599	0:22:39
Fox News	3,306	0:30:55
WorldNow	2,534	0:09:38
The Boston Globe	2,361	0:24:54
LA Times	2,268	0:21:24
NYP Holdings (NY Post)	2,150	0:13:51
AOL.com News	2,066	0:07:44
Cox Newspapers	2,041	0:18:36

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Yahoo! Get Local	14,636	0:10:56
Superpages.com	7,891	0:07:38
US Search.com	4,580	0:03:24
Citysearch	4,374	0:08:47
switchboard.com	4,094	0:06:41
Yahoo! People	4,048	0:04:08
SMARTpages	3,741	0:05:00
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,742	0:13:23
Government Guide	2,603	0:03:31
Whitepages.com	2,555	0:04:21
MSN City Guides	2,293	0:02:36
MSN Yellow Pages	2,280	0:01:23
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,322	0:22:46
nj.com (Advance)	909	0:11:03
About Cities and Towns	732	0:02:10
areaguides.net	724	0:03:21
mlive.com (Advance)	669	0:10:45
TBO.com (Tampa Tribune)	563	0:06:35
Al.com (Advance)	551	0:12:45
reversephonedirectory.com	478	0:03:25
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. September 2002