The Washington Post has created a map of local blog coverage as part of its local blogs directory.

The Buzz Map, which has been developed in partnership with Outside.in, plots the most blogged about stories and issues by location and provides links to this coverage, as wells as WaPo articles on the topics. The bigger the circle on a location, the more blogging there’s been about that spot.

According to a blog post from Outside.in, the map shows the top 10 locations ‘based on overall volume over the past week’.

Outside.in sees mutual benefits from the project: “The Post gets an easy way of integrating blog content onto its pages, and the blogs get traffic from — and the fun of appearing on — the Washington Post’s pages.”

What’s more, says Outside.in, creating the WaPo’s map ‘takes five minutes’ – so expect similar blog mapping to be rolled out on other US newspaper sites in the not too distant future.