Top Newspaper Web Sites List

Interesting tidbit coming out of The Bivings Group: A subjective list of the "Top 10" newspaper web sites.

The New York Times tops the list. Can't disagree with that. As is so often the case, when the Times does something in journalism, it does it better than anyone else.

Washington Post comes in second. I agree with that ranking as well (see my earlier post about the Wash Post. Co.).

  USA Today comes in third. I suppose it must, but only because it has a national focus. Otherwise, what distinguishes it from CNN.com, MSNBC.com, etc?

The rest of the Top 10 are regional papers and here is where I think the list starts to veer in the territory of "yeah, well that's your opinion." For instance, the San Jose Mercury News makes the list with an ordinary site, while the San Francisco Chronicle, with what I consider to be one of the more innovative newspaper sites on the web, doesn't make the list at all.

And this points up a true failing of the newspaper industry's move to the web: even on the best sites, it's really just a rehash of the day's print edition. When the history of the web is written, people will say that newspapers missed a huge opportunity to establish dominant roles on the web because all they could think to do was convert their print versions to web versions.

Anyway, thanks to the Bivings Group for at least compiling the list. Wish I had thought of doing it... ;)