Most popular hits at LATimes.com

The Lakers blog still leads the pack — followed by Show Tracker — and the Henry T. Nicholas sex story beat out the Antonio Villaraigosa sex story for visitor traffic in July. Coming this month: a USC sports blog, the environment blog that the Times launched and abruptly pulled in March, and at least one automobile blog. Not doing so good, apparently: the city desk's Bottleneck Blog about traffic and transit, and if it's included in the tally, the Opinion blog (not in the top 15.) Memo to the staff from executive editor Meredith Artley follows:

From: Artley, Meredith
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 12:16 PM
To: All LATimes Employees
Subject: Big Web Picture

Colleagues:

We had 72 million page views on latimes.com last month � the same number we had in June. Not an all-time record, but we can blame the summer traffic doldrums and a relatively slow news month. That�s a 17% increase over last July.

Borrowing a term from Steve Lopez, our �Villasalinas� coverage topped the charts. Speaking of Steve, he filed an early version of his column to the site as part of our overall coverage. There were many other strong elements to that story � lots of updates with text, video and photos. Readers� comments continue to flow in on the California page, where Shelby Grad has created a new feature called �Talk of L.A.� in which discussions are happening on the mayor, the smoking ban at parks, King-Harbor and more.

Our blogs continue to do well, serving as the center of gravity for much of our original Web content � overall traffic on the blogs broke another all-time record in July. The latest additions to our portfolio:

What�s Bruin: UCLA blog from Rich Perelman
Daily Dish: A blog from Leslie Brenner and her team on the local food scene.
Comic-Con: A crew went down to San Diego to do this temporary blog. Lots of original video pieces inside.

Coming in August: A USC blog, an environment blog and an autos blog, maybe two.

We made some usability improvements to the site in July including a light redesign of the Home & Garden section, allowing readers to browse by topic. We made the Print Edition section easier to use, with a larger A1 image and clearer navigation to each daily section. The light redesign of the article pages (a.k.a �botox treatment�) was delayed and is coming in the next two weeks. We�ll send a note when that goes up on the site.

And here is a new project that just can�t wait another month to make it into the August note: The Homicide Map launched last night (more precisely, we had a �soft launch� meaning that we are doing some final clicking around before we start linking to it across the site). It is a visual, data-rich, interactive companion to Jill Leovy�s well-read and respected blog chronicling L.A. County homicide victims.

Traffic may have remained steady in July, but we saw lots of movement internally. We brought on some new hires for the Calendar and Entertainment sections, Henry Fuhrmann�s morning copy desk got into full swing, we formalized the contributions from Colin�s team to photo and video efforts, and the innovation crew placed Web monitors in the newsroom and �digitized� the 10 a.m. page one meeting. The latest upgrade to the newsroom production system, CCI, allows us to get stories on the site more efficiently. Things are rolling.

You�ll see a nice mix of topics in the list of most-read articles below � the top two articles were from Business which is unofficially (read: according to the memory of people like Dan Gaines) a first for that section. Coverage of the mayor via our KTLA clips dominated the video charts. And the Lakers held on to their No. 1 spot in the blogs.

Top Blogs

*For the record: Due to the fact that some blogs �live� on a separate system, the last reports didn�t include Travel and Gold Derby, which are usually in the Top 10.

1. Lakers

2. Show Tracker

3. The Envelope: Gold Derby

4. Homicide Report

5. The Envelope: Styles & Scenes

6. Top of the Ticket

7. L.A. Land

8. What's Bruin

9. Travel - Daily Deal

10. Vegas - Movable Buffet

11. Comic-Con Watch

12. Day in L.A.

13. Daily Mirror

14. Dodgers

15. Phil Spector Trial