Jon Ortiz’s The State Worker blog is proving that serious news can get serious pageviews.

It’s not sports, nor gossip, nor opinion garnering the most pageviews at The Sacramento Bee, but the rather it’s Ortiz’s excellent beatblog on state workers in California. Ortiz picked the perfect time to start the blog — right as the budget impasse in California was beginning a year ago — and has provided incredible coverage ever since. The budget still isn’t fixed in California, workers have faced furloughs, IOUs are being issued instead of payment and, in general, the state is in upheveal.

Ortiz picked the perfect time to provide his unique brand of dogged coverage and community building and engagement. His blog is a great source for original news, curation and a strong community of state workers. Ortiz estimates that the blog is reaching one-third to half of all state workers in California.

Ortiz is showing that people are interested in serious news on the Web, especially if it A) impacts their lives, B) is timely and C) provides a great community.

Below you’ll find the top five blogs at the SacBee. Each had at least 250,000 pageviews last month, with The State Worker more than doubling that:

• The State Worker
• Sacto 9-1-1 (has a link on Yahoo! news)
• The Frame (a photo blog that The Bee is aggressively marketing)
• Capitol Alert (The State Worker’s sister political insider blog)
• 49ers Blog Q&A

Also keep in mind that The State Worker is a little more than a year old. It didn’t take long for this blog to really take off.