TVNewser: The saga of a six-year-old boy in a hot air balloon (or not) captivated the network news channels this afternoon.

Editor & Publisher: The Huffington Post has surpassed WashingtonPost.com in terms of unique visitors for last month, according to numbers tracked by Nielsen Online.

New York Times: Sumner Redstone will sell nearly $1 billion in Viacom and CBS shares in order to pay down debt.

The Wrap: Some choice soundbites from the Magazine Publishers of America‘s Magazine Innovation Summit this week. Our favorite came from Condé Nast group president David Carey: “We could sell the movie rights to the McKinsey study.”

Financial Times: A profile of The Daily Beast and founder Tina Brown, one year after its launch. “The Daily Beast was, from the start, in part an experiment to find a better class of online advertising in a market where infinite supply has dragged down rates. In an effort to charge premium prices, the site has targeted upmarket brands with the promise of customised packages that could reach a sought-after audience of affluent, educated and engaged readers.”

Turns out President-Elect Obama isn’t just selling newspapers he’s selling magazines and websites, too! The New York Post is reporting that Time and Newsweek, both of whom rushed election issues to the newsstands following Obama’s win on Tuesday, are selling out in metropolitan markets and are in the process of printing extra copies.

By late yesterday, Time, which published more than 100,000 extra copies, had already gone back to press, while Newsweek, which also added 100,000 to its print run, was very close to doing the same.

Meanwhile, on the Internets the Web experienced its highest traffic volume ever (ever is currently defined as the last three years, which is when the measuring of online traffic began). According to the Times “8.5 million visitors per minute clicked onto news Web sites worldwide from 11 p.m. to midnight…Several online news sites, including those produced by MSNBC, CNN and ABC News, said that Tuesday ranked as their most-visited day ever.” For some sites including the NYT.com and Washingtonpost.com traffic continued to surge post-election with both sites setting all time traffic records on Wednesday.