For the first three months of 2011, CNN was the most popular site, averaging nearly 8.5 million unique U.S. visitors each day. MSNBC came in second place with 7.4 million. New York Times, the best performing newspaper, ranked third on the ComScore list with an average 5.6 million.

Fox News, though the giant of cable, averaged 2.3 million. Nonetheless, it bested sites for the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and USA Today.

David Folkenflik provides some explanation at NPR:

People associate breaking news with cable channels, said Rick Edmonds, who writes about the finances and business trends in the news industry for the Poynter Institute… “If you’re on CNN or MSNBC, you figure you’ll find out what’s going on within five minutes… With the others, there’s a feeling I’ll get a nice serving of stories that were produced this morning.”

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