CNN.com Eyes Yahoo, Not Fox or MSNBC, as Big Competitor

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In the realm of web news, who would you peg as major players? CNN? Fox? MSNBC?

You can probably tell where this is going, since you read the headline. But CNN.com’s vice president and managing editor Meredith Artley says when it comes to traffic, the site’s big competition is none other than Yahoo. Artley dished to MarketWatch about the site’s ambitions, and cited Yahoo as a top contender in web news:

“We’re definitely shooting for much bigger fish than MSNBC and Fox… It’s Yahoo — they’re the only ones who get more [traffic] than we do on a regular basis.”

In order to stimulate user interest, Artley says, CNN is launching a series of blogs that play into the ongoing internet debate over hot topics- “education, race and identity in America, the cultural and social aspects of technology, and technology in terms of innovation,” with “the common thread [being] that these are topics that people are passionate about.”

Artley addressed the reasons CNN believes are behind the traffic disparity between the sites:

“They use AP (Associated Press) content and we don’t… They have an advantage volumetrically — they’ve got us there. But we have got the engagement and the passion.”

In October, CNN got 71 million uniques to Yahoo’s 82 million.