Christine Daniels a bonus for web traffic

The most-viewed story on the Los Angeles Times website in 2007 was nothing the paper's reporters covered or exposed or explained. It was sports columnist Mike Penner's last byline — his coming out as Christine Daniels — a story the print paper tried to bury. Could these stats be an omen for the future of journalism in L.A.? Of the paper's ten most-viewed stories, none were dispatches from the foreign staff and the only two local stories were about Paris Hilton going to jail. The rest were national stories, an Ann Powers critic's notebook on Kelly Clarkson and Clive Davis, and Geoff Boucher's January news that Rage Against the Machine would reunite at Coachella. Top story by section at LAT.com

Meanwhile, the website's Executive Editor, Meredith Artley, lists the top trends and blogs in her first memo of 2008. This will be the year of "local, local, local," she says, starting with the news blog that LAO's Veronique de Turenne will launch for the Times city desk later this month. Artley's memo follows:

From: Artley, Meredith
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 4:42 PM
To: zzAll LATimes Employees
Subject: Big Web Picture

Colleagues:

Welcome to this special edition of the Big Web Picture.

We had 74.9 million page views in December 2007; that's up almost 18% from December '06.

For 2007, we averaged 75 million page views a month. That's a 26% increase over 2006, when the average was 59 million.

The total for the year was 901 million page views. In 2006 we had 714 million, an increase of 26%.

As of this morning, the entertainment section has a crisp new design, new features and functionality. We hope you'll notice that it's better organized and much easier to access our great journalism by area of interest - movies, television, music, reviews, etc. Popular blogs, photos and videos are better integrated. This redesign introduces A-Z pages to the site. Each page combines recent news from us and around the Web, articles from our vast archive, great photos and multimedia. Here's one example. The A-Z pages are efficient to create and maintain and should be great for our Google rankings, too.

The Top of the Ticket blog is another recent highlight, breaking an all-time record for a singular blog. Andy Malcolm and Don Frederick are filing unique posts that get attention from our readers, Google and Drudge, such as:

Hillary Clinton's don't ask policy

Edwards' Iowa Express bus breaks down

Ron Paul supporters: Do NOT read this

Just in time for primary season, we launched e-mail alerts on the night of the Iowa caucuses. Sign up here.

In the works for the coming month or so:

* Local, local, local: A local breaking news blog will be created to offer readers a one-stop destination to find out what's happening right now in and around Los Angeles.
* Now that we have A-Z pages in entertainment, we'll be expanding them throughout the site. The Campaign '08 section is next up. Health, Business, Sports and Autos... we're coming after you next.
* Ongoing, finishing beta updates of The Guide.
* Phase 1 of a seriously improved site search (yes!) using Google as the backbone.
* Niceties such as a campaign '08 email newsletter, design/navigation changes to health, opinion, and a video landing page.

Top articles for December - notice how this list is heavy on local news and politics:

1. New details of tiger attack released (Charles Piller and Tim Reiterman)

2. Death in a seaside paradise (Joel Sappell)

3. Body is found in L.A. tow yard a day after car accident (Kenneth R. Weiss)

4. Drugs to build up that mental muscle (Karen Kaplan and Denise Gellene)

5. Air of inevitability escaping Clinton (Peter Nicholas)

6. Huckabee campaigning for 23% sales tax (Janet Hook)

7. A nursing home death, and a shocking phone call (Scott Glover)

8. Foot soldiers for the Ron Paul revolution (James Rainey)

9. Jamie Lynn Spears is not the first teen to have a baby (Robert Lloyd)

10. Fury in New Orleans as housing demolition OKd (Jenny Jarvie)