I hate to think what fresh traffic generation gimmicks these stats might encourage at LATimes.com, but the numbers are surprising. Even after all the photo galleries, reader pets, Oscar speculation blogs, editing to emphasize sex and celebrities and assorted other tricks to puff up page views, the Times' website ranks seventh among U.S. newspapers. That puts the LAT behind not just the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as you'd probably expect, but also behind the much smaller Boston Globe and Houston Chronicle. By these numbers, the New York Times — which edits its website to push its global news reach, smart features and innovative use of the online media — has ten times the page views the LAT attracts by going dumber, cheaper and Zellier.

October page views:

NYTimes.com -- 764,707,000
USATODAY.com -- 186,178,000
washingtonpost.com -- 163,844,000
Wall Street Journal Online -- 107,333,000
Boston.com -- 77,536,000

The Houston Chronicle -- 75,133,000
LA Times -- 75,088,000
Politico -- 62,810,000
New York Post -- 58,629,000
Star Tribune -- 54,222,000

When unique visitors are the metric, the LAT ranked fourth in October. Numbers from Nielsen Research via Editor & Publisher.