Obama leads endorsement count: With the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times and the Durango (Colo.) Herald as the latest paper’s to endorse Barack Obama, he’s taken a 3-to-1 lead on endorsements. Erica Smith is updating the tally as a GoogleMap.

“That one”: PDN Pulse, the blog of Photo District News, asks: if you were an editor would you have run that embarrassing John McCain debate-night photo (you know the one)? Commenters almost universally agree it’s newsworthy.

Big gains (mostly) for online news traffic: Nielsen Online’s monthly ranking of the top-30 news site had a new entry for September: The Anchorage Daily News, thanks to a 928-percent increase due to its coverage of Sarah Palin’s nomination as the GOP’s vice presidential choice, landed the 20th spot, with 2.1 million unique visitors. While politics and the economy drove the upticks in traffic — Politico spiked by 219 percent — there was only one top-30 site that saw a downturn: Village Voice Media, owner of City Pages, saw a 13 percent decrease.

Good question: As a reporter is kicked at a North Carolina Sarah Palin rally, Dan Savage asks, “Why are reporters still covering Palin rallies?“