Papers Run Nearly Half Of Top 20 News Sites

By: Carl Sullivan Nine of the top 20 news Web sites in the U.S. during August were affiliated with newspapers, according to audience statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings. The same nine made July's top 20.

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.

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 Citysearch. 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	18,642	0:24:37
MSNBC	17,443	0:28:11
Yahoo! News	15,217	0:20:48
New York Times	10,987	0:34:13
USA Today	9,355	0:12:05
ABC News	9,133	0:12:16
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Div.	7,567	0:15:00
washingtonpost.com	5,490	0:20:37
Time Magazine	5,390	0:06:40
Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.	5,339	0:17:03
MSN Slate	4,976	0:11:21
Hearst Newspapers Digital	3,752	0:28:08
Fox News	3,027	0:34:56
LA Times	2,316	0:15:21
NYP Holdings (New York Post)	2,039	0:16:06
Cox Newspapers	2,016	0:21:01
AOL.com News	1,959	0:08:32
Belo Newspapers	1,937	0:19:17
Associated Press	1,877	0:06:00
drudgereport.com	1,728	0:37:41

Top 20 Directories/Local Guides Sites
	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
Brand or Channel	(000)	(hh:mm:ss)
Yahoo! Get Local	16,705	0:12:20
Superpages.com	8,874	0:07:12
Citysearch	5,524	0:09:37
switchboard.com	4,864	0:08:05
US Search.com	4,672	0:04:27
SMARTpages	4,631	0:05:29
Yahoo! People	4,487	0:03:12
Government Guide	3,602	0:03:04
Whitepages.com	2,925	0:04:01
E.W. Scripps Newspapers	2,811	0:11:16
MSN Yellow Pages	2,735	0:01:14
MSN City Guide	2,651	0:02:25
Boston.com	2,590	0:22:42
Atlanta Journal-Constitution	1,537	0:19:49
NWSource.com (Seattle Times/P-I)	1,083	0:14:25
nj.com (Advance)	991	0:18:24
About Cities and Towns	915	0:02:25
HitBox.com	879	0:02:49
Al.com (Advance)	622	0:08:22
TBO.com (Tampa Tribune)	618	0:06:11
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings. Data based on audience measurement of more than 60,000 U.S. panelists with home and work Net access. August 2002