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February 8, 2012updated 14 Sep 2012 4:27pm

HuffPo UK received 4m visits in December, claims editor

By Andrew Pugh

Huffington Post UK had more than four million unique visitors in December including 2.7m from within the UK, according to editor-in–chief Carla Buzasi.

The figures emerged when Buzasi gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry earlier today and are believed to be the first time the website has disclosed web traffic since launching in the UK in June 2011.

Buzasi also revealed that the number of journalists working at the title had risen from eight to 20 during the same period.

Recruits include Matt Bagwell, a former online entertainment editor at Capital FM, media editor Stephen Hull who has joined from metro.co.uk and Georgia James from AOL Lifestyle websites.

Buzasi told the inquiry that Huffington Post UK became a member of the Press Complaints Commission in September and that it was classified by the watchdog as 'regional press"

PCC chairman Lord Hunt has yet to contact HuffPo to discuss the future of press regulation, despite the fact that 'digital website are the future of the media industry in this country", said Buzasi.

Her own experience of joining the press watchdog showed there were 'flaws'in the system, she argued, telling the inquiry: 'We went to the PCC in September… they didn't actually really know what to do with us".

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After a series of meetings they were eventually classified as being regional press, and Buzasi said the whole process 'seemed to me at the time needlessly complex".

Buzasi, the former editor of marieclaire.co.uk, also argued that bloggers should not be forced to sign up to a regulator.

'It shouldn't be financially prohibitive, people being tied up in red tape before they want to post their first blog somewhere,'she said.

'The majority of blogs are opinion pieces, people who've got something that they want to get off their chest, they're not journalists so they don't have that platform… I think it's important that they should be given that voice."

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