A list of most-linked newspapers

Every online player, from vast media concerns to individual bloggers, covets URLs directed to their websites. Links count as currency and and influence, projecting one’s products - words and images - and driving advertising revenue. A site called NewsLink purports to list the most-linked American online newspapers on the Web. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ranks 18th on this list, seems to outperform the limitations of the city’s population which was estimated at about 347,000 for 2006. The larger St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area provides a much broader pool, however, at 2,803,707 for 2007. That MSA ranking of 18th in the nation tallies nicely with the paper’s rank on the NewsLink list.

NewsLink doesn’t spell out its methodology for compiling the list, so caution is advised in relying on its findings.

The top twenty on that list:

1. New York Times
2. Washington Post
3. Los Angeles Times
4. USA Today
5. New York Daily News
6. Miami Herald
7. South Florida Sun-Sentinel
8. Houston Chronicle
9. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10. Indianapolis Star
11. Atlanta Journal-Constitution
12. Boston Globe
13. Detroit Free Press
14. Dallas Morning News
15. Arizona Central
16. Orlando Sentinel
17. Chicago Sun-Times
18. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
19. New York Post
20. San Francisco Chronicle

Some things of interest:

The Chicago Tribune falls just outside the list at #21. I would have thought them higher.

The Kansas City Star doesn’t make the list until #55. Two places later sits the quadrennially-important Manchester Union Leader of Maine.

The Village Voice is ranked at #238. The Army Times, #929.

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