Events in Egypt and the wider Middle East last week constituted the biggest international story in the US in the past four years, according to Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism News Coverage Index. Making up 56% of the 'newshole,' turmoil in the Middle East was "easily" the biggest overseas story in a week since Pew started the index in January 2007, and was in fact the fourth biggest story of any kind, behind the 2008 presidential election campaign and last month's Tucson shooting.

The Middle East story was most prominent on cable news, where it accounted for 76% of coverage, but even in newspapers it made up 44% of news and online just over half, at 51%. The blizzard in the American Midwest was the second biggest story, but this only attracted 8% of coverage.

Until now, the biggest international story of any single week was the Iraq war in September 2007, at 43%, followed by the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 with 41%.

Why has the Egyptian unrest, an "event that has not involved U.S. troops or directly imperiled U.S. citizens" generated significantly more attention than the country's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? PEJ's explanation is that there have been a huge number of cameras and journalists on the ground, and that the media themselves became part of the story as journalists suffered attacks and harassment, as well as the political implications of the situation for the US.

The number of monthly unique users on Metro.co.uk should hit five million by the end of the year, the daily commuter title pledged as part of a set of targets outlined today, Journalism.co.uk reported.

According to figures presented by Metro, the site had 3.5 million unique monthly browsers on average in November 2010, compared to around one million in November 2009.

Although this figure is low compared to the numbers at the websites major UK dailies, it is interesting that the freesheet's traffic is increasing even in an arena where most competitors' sites are also free.

The article quoted Rich Mead, Metro's assistant managing director, who said this is just the starting point.

As Guardian's Roy Greenslade noted, Metro is far and away Britain's most successful national newspaper: over the past year its distribution has increased as well as its advertising volume and revenue.

Associated Newspapers, the paper's publisher, would not share individual publications' figures, but the Metro team claimed 2010 was Metro's best year.

Forbes is planning to involve its readers more in both the print and digital versions of its magazine. Lewis DVorkin, chief product officer of Forbes Media, recently wrote about how "At Forbes, we're beginning to open up our print and digital platforms so many more knowledgeable and credible content creators can provide information and perspective and connect with one another," he said.

He noted that with the launch of this year's Forbes 400, reader content began to appear in the pages of the magazine. "What was yesterday's audience is today's cadre of potential experts who can report what they know or filter information for distribution to friends who trust their judgments," he wrote.

Although no official numbers have been released by Times and Sunday Times owner News International, audience research company Nielsen has estimated that an average of 362,000 UK web users went behind the papers' paywalls between July and September, reported the Guardian.

Nielsen estimates that 1.78 million monthly unique visitors from the UK went to the two papers' homepages, meaning that of these, just over one-fifth are going on to access subscription content, the Guardian added. In the three months until June 2010, the traffic to the Times Online site, predecessor to TheTimes.co.uk and SundayTimes.co.uk, was just over 3 million.

Print subscribers for the Times and Sunday Times have free access to the websites: the Times has 107,000 subscribers and the Sunday Times 112,000, the Guardian noted. So it is unclear how many people are paying for an online subscription only.

The numbers do suggest, however, that traffic going through to individual stories has fallen by just over 88% since the paywall was implemented. This is in line with previous reports of News International's expectations.