February web stats: R-J No. 1, Reno moves to No. 2

The Las Vegas Review-Journal continued in February its total dominance of Web viewership among Nevada newspapers and television stations. No news there. But what I told you was probably going to happen to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper's traffic did, indeed, happen in February. That site dropped out of the No. 2 spot, passed by the Reno newspaper. I expect those two sites will battle for the distant No. 2 place in the state for the months to come. Assuming the management "magic" over at the Sun continues true to form, expect the Sun's Web site to continue to decline and, possibly, fade behind Channel 8 this time next year. That's a long fall, but never underestimate the Sun's ability to turn gold into straw.

Meanwhile, in news that bucks the recession trends, the Review-Journal in February moved up to 64th largest print Web site nationwide and 157th place in the "news and media" category, as counted by Hitwise. The "news and media" category includes print, electronic media and web portals like The Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Google and Yahoo.

Here's how things stacked up in February:

1. Las Vegas Review-Journal - 157
2. Reno Gazette-Journal - 569
3. Sun - 608
4. Channel 8 - 1,245
5. Channel 5 - 1,404
6. Channel 13 - 1,504
7. Channel 3 - 1,627

Programming note: This is the last time I'll bring you these monthly reports. I did them for a while, then stopped last year. I brought them back because readers (OK, one reader) said he missed them. But, frankly, there's just not enough movement in the rankings to report this every month. Suffice to say, the R-J is No. 1. Everyone else is so far back so as not to even count. That's all you need to know. I'll revisit, perhaps, quarterly or semi-annually.