US newspaper blogs record 210% increase

Traffic to major US newspapers' blog sites grew 210% year-over-year in December, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings. Part of the reason for that tremendous rise is due to some papers adding new blogs during 2006. Even so, it's clear that blogs are increasing in popularity. Some specific findings: unique visitors to blog sites affiliated with the top 10 US online papers rose to 3.8m in December 2006 from 1.2m a year earlier, and blog pages accounted for 13% of overall visits to newspaper sites compared to 4% the year before. NYTimes.com was the top site followed by USAToday.com and Washingtonpost.com. (Via Market Wire)