A Seattle Post-Intelligencer writer with a strong interest in finding a buyer for his newspaper sends over some noteworthy stats. One could definitely read them as an enticement for some wealthy civic do-gooder to step up and purchase the P-I from Hearst. But I also read these stats as one more piece of evidence suggesting that Hearst would be a little crazy not to make a run at some sort of web-only P-I after the print edition's likely demise in early March. (And, I further read this e-mail as a reminder of the dizzying number of blogs the P-I has thrown at the wall lately—with some, obviously, sticking.)

But enough of that. Let's do the numbers:

From: Smith, Don

Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 6:05 PM

To: XXXX

Subject: January Traffic sets P-I record!

P-I staff blogs posted a record 2.8 million page views in January, with two blogs over a half-million page views for the first time ever and nine staff blogs were over 100,000 page views — also a first!

Leading all blogs — with about a quarter of that traffic — was Joe Tartakoff and the Microsoft blog. With 774,153 page views, the Microsoft blog eclipsed the previous record for any P-I blog that had been held by his predecessor, Todd Bishop. But Todd's high, 764,388 page views in June 2008, came mostly on the strength of a single post which had external links. That post, about a Bill Gates e-mail, got 472,405 page views and was one of two posts that got over 20,000 page views that month. Joe's record-setting pace, by contrast, included not a single post with more than 50,000 page views, but 11 posts that got more than 20,000. That's a strong, steady readership.

The Seattle 911 blog, with Casey McNerthney and the breaking news crew, topped a half-million page views for the second time in its brief eight-month history. Again, that's a strong, steady audience. The Big Blog drew 210,712, Huskies Football got 171,873, Aerospace was 140,242, Football 112,784 and Seattle Politics 110,657 — all in familiar six-digit territory showing loyal, steady followings.

New to the 100,000-plus circle this month were Devouring sEATtle, at 112,186 and Seattle Sports (Royal Brougham's Baby), which drew 100,922 page views in its first month.

All of that, and much more, led to record traffic, up more than a third over a month ago and 115 percent ahead of a year ago.

Thanks for all that work! (Complete stats for January Staff blogs are attached).

Don Smith

UPDATE: And hey, since we're showing you theirs, we'll show you ours too. For the month of January Slog had 1.58 million page views—less than the total page views for all the P-I blogs added together, but far more than any individual P-I blog.