Phobrek's Blog

Once in a while I like to compare the various news sites online against one another, using their lists of "popular" or most read articles. It can be pretty funny, as well as telling. Anyway, today is one of those onces!


CNN's Most Popular
1 National Mall in monumental disrepair, activists say
2 How much skin is too much at the office?
3 Eight dead as canoeists sucked into turbines
4 Woman who died on hospital floor called 'beautiful person'
5 American keeps hot dog-eating crown in overtime


Al Jazeera Most emailed articles
1 Chomsky: US public irrelevant
2 Israel 'committing memorycide'
3 Obama's other Muslim problem
4 Finding Brazil's isolated tribes
5 US 'escalates covert Iran Missions'


New York Times Most emailed
1 Nicholas D. Kristof: The Luckiest Girl*
2 Well: The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating
3 Paul Krugman: Rove’s Third Term
4 Editorial: New and Not Improved
5 The ’60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire

* Had to check this one out to see what it was - an Op Ed bit about a Ugandan girl that managed to go from illiterate peasant to graduating from CT College.


FOX News Most read
1 Flat-screen TV Gas a 'Climate Time Bomb'
2 A Fitting Tribute to a Slain Navy SEAL Gains Attention
3 Grandma, 70, Gives Birth to Twins
4 Surgeon Ordered to Pay $795G for Cutting Off Man's Penia
5 Christina Applegate's Boyfriend Found Dead


London Times Most read
1 Adolf Hitler finally returns to Berlin - but will tight security ensure model behaviour? *
2 Missing PlayStations provide clue to the murder of two French students
3 The top 10 fan versus band scuffles
4 Ingrid Betancourt returns 'home' to France - but doubts emerge about 'daring' rescue **

* Reports on a Madame Tussaud dummy of Hitler being used in a new display.
** This is actually really interesting - IB is one of the hostages recscued in Colombia. But a Swedish radio station (RSR) has been reporting that the rescue was a largely contrived affair, and that the US had quietly paid $20 million (to who, exactly?) to manufacture a staged rescue.


The Nation Most Emailed
1 Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
2 Obama's Evolving Foreign Policy
3 The White Whale*
4 Just Democracy
5 This Brave Nation: A Defining Moment

* E.L. Doctorow's keynote address at a joint meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society on the theme of "The Public Good: Knowledge as the Foundation for a Democratic Society."


Washington Post Most Viewed Articles
1 Compound in Red Wine Fights Ravages of Age
2 A Man of Seasonal Principles*
3 Leading With Their Left**
4 The Economy? Words Fail Me.
5 Zooming Around the Alps In a Homemade Wing Suit

* Op Ed re: Obama
** Op Ed re: election


ABC News Most Read
1 'Pregnant Man' Has Baby Girl
2 Brinkley's Soon-to-Be Ex Addicted to Sex?
3 Blueberry Cobbler, Flag-Waving Wings and Patriotic Potatoes
4 Brinkley Forgives Husband's Ex-Mistress
5 Sen. Jesse Helms is Dead at 86


CBS Most Views
1 More Passport Files Breached
2 Bush Greets New Citizens, And Protestors
3 Fit To Serve? Most Young Adults Aren't
4 Stolen Beauty
5 Judge Rejects Bush's Stance On Wiretaps


MSNBC Most Viewed Videos
1 Bush heckled during July 4 speech
2 Fireworks Gone Bad
3 Brinkley trial gets nasty
4 Video shows emotional hostage rescue
5 Brinkley takes the stand


Daily Mail (UK) Most Read
1 The floating cities that could one day house climate change refugees
2 Facebook generation 'form flimsy friendships and are bored by reality'
3 Our solar system is egg-shaped, according to distant space probe
4 Polaroid launches a wallet-sized printer that prints your mobile phone snaps in seconds
5 Meet the underwater Anaconda snake that could solve our energy problems


Telegraph (UK) MOST VIEWED
1 Schoolboys disciplined for 'refusing to pray to Allah'
2 Alex Allan, Britain's leading spymaster, found at home in a coma
3 Ray Lewis resigns as deputy London mayor to Boris Johnson over magistrate claims
4 Faceless figures cause a stir at Wimbledon, Harrods and Elton


The Independent (UK)
1 'I fell in love with a female assassin'
2 Why Canada is the best haven from climate change
3 No words necessary: The cartoonists tackle climate change
4 Muslims feel like 'Jews of Europe'
5 Barcelona the most likely destination for unsettled Adebayor*

* A football (soccer) player being traded.


LA Times most Viewed
1 Baron Davis confident he'll be playing with Elton Brand
2 Goleta fire now covers 5,400 acres
3 Germany's newest citizen, center: Chris Kaman*
4 How harmful is porn?
5 Pringles are not potato chips, judge says in British tax case

* Basketball player.


Huffington Post
1 Arianna Huffington: Seven Things Barack Obama Should Do to Keep From Blowing It
2 Obama Vows To Expand Bush's Faith-Based Programs
3 Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding
4 Wesley Clark Stands By McCain Criticism
5 Barack Obama: My Position on FISA


The Guardian Weekly (UK), Wallstreet Journal, and Christian Science Monitor don't have such a lists.