In a continuation of Yahoo!’s network-wide development of original blog content, Yahoo! News launches its new foreign affairs blog, The Envoy, today. The launch arrives as the Yahoo! blogs are experiencing unprecedented success, setting new traffic records in both January and February.

The Envoy, helmed by Laura Rozen, formerly Politico’s chief foreign policy reporter, is the latest addition to The Upshot network of News blogs that launched last July and also includes The Ticket (politics), The Lookout (national affairs) and The Cutline (media). Dave Morgan, Yahoo!'s executive editor of North American audiences, said "The addition of Laura to The Upshot team is another example of how the Yahoo! News blogs have established themselves not only as a home to one of the industry's largest audiences, but also a magnet for the industry's best talent."

Rozen, whose fellow Upshot staffers hail from outlets such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, Gawker Media and Talking Points Memo, added in her introductory post, “We aim not only to tell the story of international affairs, but also to throw new light on the power players and storytellers.”

Between the Arab revolutions, WikiLeaks, America’s ongoing wars and more, The Envoy fills a huge coverage hole for The Upshot. Rozen, who joined Yahoo! last week, has already made several posts with thousands of comments and Facebook likes (see: Gaddafi’s weirdness, Libyan unrest continues and Libya stalemate).

Yahoo!’s original blogs, of which there are now 23, bring unique and distinct voices to Yahoo! through a world-class team of editors and bloggers. They began launching in January of 2008 -- first in Sports, then in News and now in Entertainment. Here’s a look at the traffic growth over time.

Yahoo! blogs topped 500 million page views for the first time in January and 550 million for the first time in February.

This is Yahoo!’s fourth year of creating and developing top-shelf blogs with massive audiences both within the Yahoo! network and on the web at-large, and we look forward to strengthening the current blogs and launching new ones (like The Envoy!) soon.

-Jamie Mottram, Director of Yahoo! blog content