Nielsen Online has released its latest numbers, showing how much time people spend per month at top-30 newspaper sites.

The August results weren't good for our hometown offerings.

The clubhouse leader was the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Web site, which clocked in at 20 minutes, 47 seconds per reader.

The Chronicle's SFGate.com, however, managed only seven minutes, one second per user. That's down from more than 16 minutes in August '08.

Only four papers in Nielsen's top-30 ranked lower. One of them, the San Jose Mercury News, came in dead last -- by a longshot -- with only four minutes, 42 seconds per user (which is actually up by two seconds from a year ago). This tells us either that the Star Tribune's Web site is more than four times better than that of the Mercury News, or that people in Silicon Valley have more than four times as many things to do other than read online newspapers as their counterparts in Minnesota.

There is a caveat to SFGate's wide year-over-year swing, however. In June, Nielsen expanded its panel to eight times its previous size, which had a dramatic affect on many rankings. As a result, the company recommends looking only at this year's numbers, and not comparing them to last year.

Nielsen's Top 30
Site -- Aug. '09 (hour:minute:second) -- Aug. '08

NYTimes.com -- 0:13:58 -- 0:29:48
washingtonpost.com -- 0:10:22 -- 0:10:49
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:14:01 -- 0:13:57
USATODAY.com -- 0:13:32 -- 0:16:20
LA Times -- 0:09:28 -- 0:06:48

Daily News Online Edition -- 0:07:11 -- 0:05:16
Boston.com -- 0:17:26 -- 0:09:09
New York Post -- 0:09:47 -- 0:14:50
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 0:07:01 -- 0:16:37
Chicago Tribune -- 0:11:52 -- 0:07:33

Politico -- 0:07:27 -- 0:10:29
NJ.com -- 0:10:26 -- 0:07:51
The Houston Chronicle -- 0:11:27 -- 0:31:11
Chicago Sun-Times -- 0:08:31 -- 0:08:22
MercuryNews.com -- 0:04:42 -- 0:04:40

Newsday -- 0:08:32 -- 0:04:48
MiamiHerald.com -- 0:10:02 -- 0:03:29
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 0:17:31 -- 0:14:08
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 0:10:34 -- 0:04:04
Philly.com -- 0:08:16 -- 0:03:02

Orlando Sentinel -- 0:07:33 -- 0:07:59
Detroit Free Press -- 0:13:35 -- 0:13:33
The Washington Times -- 0:07:05 -- 0:03:05
tampabay.com -- 0:06:47 -- 0:09:08
Star Tribune -- 0:20:47 -- 0:24:47

DenverPost.com -- 0:06:49 -- 0:04:21
The News & Observer -- 0:06:57 -- 0:08:37
Azcentral.com -- 0:15:24 -- 0:12:40
Seattle Times -- 0:15:07 -- 0:07:26
Sun-Sentinel -- 0:09:40 -- 0:06:25