Looking back at 2011, it's clear one story grabbed the nation by the collar and shook it to attention: the devastating earthquake in Japan in March that set off a massive tsunami, and triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
I still remember the middle-of-the-night call from my senior producer as if it were yesterday. I groggily answered my BlackBerry some time after 4 a.m. ET, heard the word "tsunami" and was already rubbing my eyes and reaching for my least-crumpled clothes. By the time I arrived at work about 20 minutes later, the newsroom was in full swing.
It quickly became clear there was a great appetite for any morsel of news about the disaster that was unfolding in Japan. We didn't realize just how much that was true until the next day when we saw the mind-blowing pageviews on our stories, photo galleries, and video clips.
I compiled the list of CTVNews.ca's most-popular stories below based on the number of pageviews each one received. If I were to add up the pageviews for news stories topic by topic, coverage on the Japan quake would win hands down. Perhaps our second most-popular topic .
But because I've broken down our stories headline by headline, this list shows the story about a Japanese student who fell into the Niagara River was the most-read while the royal wedding doesn't even register on this list.
Some stories, such as the one about the wounded U.S. troops may seem like an anomaly. In fact, page views on that story soared when the linked to it.
For the most part, the stories that rose to the top of the heap were the ones that spoke to our greatest fears: the end of the world, the snatching of your child from your own home, the untimely death of a popular leader to that malicious robber of life: cancer.
And even though we often shake our heads in the newsroom that this Kim Kardashian story, or that Justin Bieber story is quickly climbing the ranks of pageviews, this list proves to me what I've always believed: A good story is a good story. And there is always a hunger for real news, above all else.
Here's your opportunity to re-read CTVNews.ca's top 10 list of stories from 2011:
- (At last count, nearly 20,000 people have died)
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