• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 18, 2006

Traffic to most news sites slowed the first week in September, which included the Labor Day holiday, compared to the previous five-day work week. But traffic at a handful of news sites--those owned by companies that made news as well as reporting it--surged, according to new data by Nielsen//NetRatings.

CBS News saw traffic grow 83 percent to 2.4 million unique visitors for the week ending Sept. 10--which was the same week new anchor Katie Couric debuted.

But most top news sites fared worse for the week ending Sept. 10 than the week before, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. AOL News drew about 8.9 million visitors the first full week in September--down from around 12.3 million the week before--while CNN saw its traffic drop to 10.5 million visitors from 11.6 million the week ending Sept. 3. NYTimes. com traffic fell to 4.9 million the week ending Sept. 10, from 5.1 million the week before.

Among the top 10 news sites, only Yahoo grew its traffic for the first full week in September--drawing 16.9 million unique visitors that week, compared to 15.8 million the week before.

In addition, pictures of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' daughter, Suri Cruise, sent visitors to CondeNet. Traffic at that site surged to 3.5 million for the week ending Sept. 10--up more than double from 1.6 million visitors the week ending Sept. 3.