The release of the newspaper circulation number has been a revelation, and it's not just the kids over at News Corp who are giving each other fives. James Boyce of the Huffington Post does a little dancing on the grave, picking on his hometown Boston Globe, whose circulation fell 6.7%, and touts the emergence of blogs, sounding much like the G.O.P with its "mandate" about two years ago.

Mainstream Media can thumb its nose at citizen journalists who post on blogs. Joe Klein can dismiss bloggers going to Las Vegas for YearlyKos with a curt "can't we just stop this crap?"

But Joe, why would we? Our traffic is skyrocketing. We can raise awareness, and money. We work together and guess what? What you're writing about next week, I read about last week on mydd.com, or crooksandliars.com or rawstory.com.

Well, that's great and all. And the decline in circulation can pretty much be attributed to the internet. Except here's the thing - newspapers have websites too. And they're getting good at it, to the point that NY Times has more readers online than offline.

Which isn't to say blogs don't have their place or that newspapers should dismiss them. Just don't get too cocky is all we're saying.

The Shift Becomes a Landslide [HuffPo]

Update: We should clarify that HuffPo is not getting too big for its britches, just James Boyce, who is but one of hundreds of HuffPo contributors and whose opinions are his only, not HuffPo's. And Rachel Sklar writes elsewhere on Eat the Press, "We'll be more interested in these numbers when they fold in internet pickup; we suspect WaPo has the NYP and NYDN beat in online re-circulation (if not Pulitzers)."