MediaFile

As America celebrated a historic presidential election on Nov. 4, US newspapers also celebrated their (one-day) revival as all major city newspapers were cleared off the shelves the next day. Media industry watchers hailed President-elect Barack Obama’s media Midas touch, as if he could even save the long suffering newspaper business.

It would seem the Obama effect helped Yahoo News snatch the number one online spot on Election Day, with 7.6 million unique users. It was the largest single-day audience in online news history, Yahoo said, citing the latest comScore Media Metrix figures.

This is nice news for Yahoo, away from the world of volatile stock prices and non-seller remorse. Yahoo’s stock briefly dropped to single-digit territory today before rallying to end up 8 percent at $11.15. It’s still some $30 billion cheaper than Microsoft’s bid.

Anyway, back to the magical Election Day, when Yahoo beat political news stalwarts like MSNBC, CNN and FoxNews.

Election Day audience figures for the top five online news sites according to comScore were:

The sun shone for Barack Obama at the annual Allen & Co mogulfest in Sun Valley, Idaho, where many campers gave the Democratic hopeful the thumbs up.

In keeping with a tradition held every presidential election year at the confab, Allen & Co  passed around a faux ballot box for attendees inviting even their kids to cast their votes for their favorite candidate.

“Obama. I think he’s going to win,” said Sony Corp head Howard Stringer. Many others at the gathering privately pledged support for Obama.   The crowd draws a large Hollywood contingent, which is traditionally pro-Democratic and even Republican supporters like Rupert Murdoch have predicted a Democratic landslide in November. Who’d expect Rupert  to pick a loser?