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September was a busier news month, including the assassination of right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk. Syndication website MSN saw the biggest drop year on year among the top ten by more than a third (39.5% to 144 million visits). Athlon Sports followed Forbes in year-on-year traffic decline with a drop in visits of 48% to 290.3 million, along with AP News (down 46% to 78.5 million visits). Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips told Press Gazette last month the brand has lost traffic to articles it was previously known for, such as “Who’s the richest person in the world?
- New data offers further confirmation of a crisis in the U.S. student loan portfolio, in which too many borrowers are not repaying their student loans.
- All but one of the ten most-visited news sites in the US, and almost four in five of the top 50, grew their visits compared with September.
- The Independent was one of the fastest-growing news sites in the US in January, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.
- The figures for July are the first Press Gazette has published since Similarweb updated its data model.
- February 11, 2026 • The attorney general’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee comes one year into her tenure, a period marked by a striking departure from traditions and norms at the Justice Department.
The New York Post (down 34% to 93.5 million) and MSN (down 28%) saw the biggest year-on-year declines in the top ten. Sign up for Press Gazette’s weekly Future of Media US newsletter https://furtherafrica.com/2021/07/16/empowering-women-for-agriculture/ on Substack for more stories like this Men’s Journal therefore rejoined Press Gazette’s top 50 ranking, having also featured with significant growth in May and June 2025. Hollywood’s biggest names gathered at the Beverly Hilton for the 98th Academy Awards Luncheon Tuesday. “American Love Story” re-creates JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s life in NYC — where, a friend said, he would take off his shirt to lure the paparazzi. Heartbreaking photographs show the gutted four-story building, with most of its floors reduced to burnt rubble.
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The only sites to see visits decline month-on-month were the US website of the UK’s The Sun newspaper (37.1 million) and Athlon Sports (27.5 million), which both dropped 3%. All of the top-ten most-visited news sites in the US saw traffic growth when compared with June, according to figures from digital intelligence platform Similarweb. Among the top ten news sites by US traffic People magazine again saw the most year-on-year growth in August, having also been the fastest annual growers in April, May and June.
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Men’s Journal was the fastest growing top-50 news website in the US in May, quadrupling its traffic compared to the same month a year earlier. Of the 50 biggest news websites by visits in June, 34 saw month-on-month growth (up from 15 in May) and 29 saw a year-on-year increase (up from 14 last month). Al.com saw the biggest month-on-month growth at 14%, and was one of just six websites to see an increase in visits compared to July.
The second-fastest annual growth was at climate site The Cooldown (25.5 million, up 562%) and the third-fastest was at Newsweek (172%), which was also the fastest-growing site among the top ten domains. Year-on-year, however, Athlon (athlonsports.com) saw the greatest growth in the top 50, drawing in 697% more visits in July 2024 than in July 2023. The company says the update has improved the accuracy of the data, particularly with regard to smaller websites.
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Fastest-growing was long-standing sports publisher Athlon Sports, which entered our top 50 for the first time in 33rd place (35.9 million visits, up 962% year-on-year). People meanwhile retook fifth place following its strong growth, with Yahoo Finance (154.4 million) falling into seventh. MSNBC (29.2 million) increased visits by 66%, NBC News (128 million) by 62%, Axios (40 million) by 54% and The Atlantic (28.2 million) by 52%.
