East Coast blizzard tops news cycle

The week between Christmas and New Year's is notoriously slow in the news business. (The Cutline, for one, rolled out 10 lists!)

But there was one major story that newspapers and cable news networks were all over: the blizzard.

The East Coast snow storm clocked in as the biggest story last week, according to Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The journalism organization, which typically looks at over 50 media outlets for its weekly studies, focused this past week on the top 12 U.S. news sites.

It was a huge storm and certainly merited coverage. But the blizzard likely received far more attention than other storms because it buried New York City, where many of the country's biggest media outlets are based.

The coverage also went beyond how many inches were on the ground, but focused a lot on the politics of snow -- from the much-criticized performances of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to Newark Mayor Cory Booker's use of Twitter in coordinating snow removal and personally responding to residents.