Most read LAT Mag story ever

Claire Hoffman's talker on Girls Gone Wild creep Joe Francis in West two weeks ago might be the most-clicked-on L.A. Times non-news story ever. As this memo sent from LATimes.com to top editors in the newsroom shows, it has lapped last weekend's SoCal most powerful about eighteen times:

From: Ulken, Eric
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:53 PM
To: yyPage1
Subject: West magazine traffic

Hi, folks. I've gotten requests for total pageview counts on the last two West magazine cover stories. Here they are (as of about 5 p.m. today):

'Baby, Give Me a Kiss' (Joe Francis profile)
story: 452,000 / photo gallery: 593,000

The West 100
story: 25,000 / Top 10 flash gallery: 28,000

Today's most viewed story, by the way, is the amazing tale of the Mexican fishermen who were found after drifting in the Pacific for nine months.