I used Google Analytics to provide the statistics and generate the top-ten list. Technically, the article I listed as number 10 was number 11.
The reason for that is that the article that came in ninth, according to Google Analytics, was originally published in November 2010. It's an interview I conducted with author and documentary filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy at the Virginia Film Festival that year, when she presented Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird. (That film covers the same ground as Murphy's 2010 book, Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird.)I suspect that the staying power of that three-year-old article, "Filmmaker: To Kill a Mockingbird was ‘ammunition in the civil rights movement'," is largely the result of web searches by high-school students doing research for a term paper about Harper Lee's famous novel or its well-regarded movie version.
Since just nine of the top ten stories for 2013 were actually published in 2013, I decided to skip number nine and include number 11 to reflect more accurately the events of this year.
Here's part of my summary of the 2013 top ten. I'll omit the "number one" article for now. If you want to see that story and be as surprised by it as I was, click here.
Virginia politics, the 1963 Kennedy assassination, humorist Tina Fey, marijuana legalization, liquor laws, and the Boston Marathon bombers dominated the most popular stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.Publishing this top-ten list continues a tradition I began in December 2011. That first yearly list was divided into three parts published over three days: Part I, Part II, and Part III. The second annual top-ten list, in 2012, was slimmed down into a single article published on the last day of the year.
Given that 2013 was a gubernatorial election year in Virginia, it comes as no surprise that articles about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (now governor-elect) and his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli drew a large number of views. Cuccinelli, in fact, was the subject of three of the top-ten stories, although Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis entered the top ten only in an interview about the election with political scientist Larry Sabato. Marijuana-smoking lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson (R) also made the list.
The JFK assassination was a trending topic on Twitter and Google through much of November, and an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald's co-worker ranked third. (An interview with another assassination witness just missed the cut, at twelfth among 2013 stories.)
Both lists comprise films intended for the mass suburban market. The film industry has become bifurcated, finding that making money with smaller movies intended for adults is challenging. I may face that myself soon. I did see "Nebraska". Watch for "South Dakota".
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