i love blogs who pretend to be experts of our newspaper and are the first to repeat the “bad” news about us, but then completely ignore news when we do spectacularly well. i love it because it makes me feel better than them. and that makes me smile and wanna take pics of me smiling in vegas hotel bathrooms.

the other day my boss wrote an email to the entire staff talking about our numbers last month.

turns out we broke damn near every traffic record we ever had. and it sure seems to me that we break records almost every month – something our competitors dont seem to do as often as we do for some reason.

anyways, heres part of what she wrote:

Colleagues: Our strong, swift coverage of major events in the past month attracted a record-breaking 26 million unique users to our site. That’s up 50% over June 2008. Those 26 million users generated more than 155 million page views, 30% growth over last year. Visits from our local audience grew 30% over this time last year, a good sign that more of our immediate community is turning to us for local news as well as stories in our backyard that have a national or global impact. Speaking of…

Our coverage of Michael Jackson’s tragic death continues to be the most insightful and most thorough anywhere. Our nimble, well-sourced team continues to break news daily on L.A. Now. The photo galleries, which are being constantly updated, have drawn millions of page views. We’ll be launching a few impressive interactive features in the coming weeks as the story unfolds and becomes more complex. We set a new daily record for page views the day Jackson died.

It’s important to note that our coverage of the Jackson story is not the sole reason for this readership leap.

During the height of the crisis that grew out of the Iran elections, readers flocked to Babylon & Beyond to read a constant stream of updates around the clock from Borzou Daragahi in Tehran, Alexandra Zavis and Amber Smith here in L.A. and Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo. Borzou’s story of “Neda” was particularly well-read and commented upon.

– snip –

Top blogs
Blogs reached a new record – more than 18 million page views across our blog network. That’s 100% growth compared to last year, and 10x the growth from June 2007. Incredible.

1. L.A. Now* — 5,708,961 page views
2. Dish Rag — 2,668,729
3. Show Tracker — 928,069
4. Gold Derby — 915,671
5. Pop & Hiss* — 825,420
6. Lakers
7. Top of the Ticket
8. Fabulous Forum
9. Hero Complex
10. Technology
11. Company Town*
12. Dodger Thoughts
13. Culture Monster
14. Daily Travel & Deal
15. L.A. Unleashed
16. Comments Blog
17. Babylon & Beyond*
18. Outposts
19. Money & Co.
20. Big Picture

Asterisks denote new records.

feel free to read the whole thing here. i know there are some people who want newspapers to die, i know there are some who root for the home team to fail, but i can honestly tell you and them: you think the above numbers are so good you dont even wanna repeat them? then youre in for a nightmare because we have yet begun to rock.

the success of LA Now, a real live 24/7 hard news blog in the center of our newsroom, staffed by hard working journalists who feed the blog first and the paper second, is clearly a step in the right direction and the tip of the future (and present) of modern-day journalism. and in many ways the LA Times is leading the way.

record-breaking growth is something we have become accustomed to here, and its based on increased participation from the entire staff, and there is no reason why i think that sort of trend and success should change any time soon.