News of the world

IN JANUARY the New York Times lost its top spot in comScore's ranking of the world's biggest newspaper websites to Britain's Daily Mail. The Times sniffed at the accuracy of comScore's figures, which exaggerate the Mail's online audience by including a personal-finance site that the paper owns. But the battle to be biggest reflects a growing phenomenon: national news publications going global.

A mere one-quarter of the Mail'sonline readers are in Britain. The Guardian, which caters to those who like their news left-leaning and serious in contrast to the Mail's right-wing raciness, has one-third in Britain and another third in America (see charts). Their chief competitors are two American publications: the New York Times, which like the Guardian aims at readers of serious news, and the Huffington Post, which since its launch in 2005 has become the biggest site of the four (it is not in comScore's “newspaper” category).