Several newspaper portals ranked higher than Google News in unique traffic for May 2008 according to stats released by Nielsen Online reports Editor & Publisher.

This is indeed good news for newspapers who are struggling to come to grips with declining print circulation and the massive shortfall between print and digital revenues. It should also silence those publishers who argue that Google News steals content and traffic and gives nothing back in return as this demonstrates more than anything that a symbiotic relationship does exist between Google and content producers.

Interestingly, Yahoo! News showed that they are still a force to be reckoned with as they came out tops in the current events and global news category with 35.8 million unique visitors closely followed by the MSNBC Digital Network, CNN Digital Network, AOL News, NYTimes.com, Tribune Newspapers, Gannett Newspapers, and Google News respectively.

The suprise newcomer to the current events and global news Top 30 was The Huffington Post, which grew by more than 255% since May 2007 and edged out the Associated Press (AP) coming in at #27. The HuffPost is a fantastic example of a successful online news brand that has mastered the relationship between traditional reporting and social media and I regularly use it as a case-study in my own presentations to media practitioners. Originally founded as a news aggregator and opinion blog in 2005 by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, it has grown into an enviable superpower in just 3 years and as the Nielsen data shows, beats traditional news brands in both traffic and revenues.