That was an unofficial site created by SmiGueL.
And he was getting the information from the newspaper? There was some kind of official information about the hashrate because otherwise how could he create the site? I am sure he wasn't making up the hashrate posted there.
SmiGueL was only following the number of blocks found per day and new bitcoins received on AM mining address (1HtUGfbDcMzTeHWx2Dbgnhc6kYnj1Hp24i)