While it sometimes feels like the internet is a receptacle for Kardashian photos and top 10 lists, Guardian readers proved this year that serious news matters – and, well, so does a bunch of cats invading the stage at a G20 summit.
Thanks to the audience team, the Guardian has readership data on the articles from our US office, whether they were about major news events or Donald Trump (latterly this year, a lot of them were about Donald Trump).
So here is a look at what you read, watched and shared in 2015.
The most-read news story was the first live blog about the Paris attacks, a global effort by our offices in the US and abroad.
Major US investigations also dominated the most-read stories – especially the interactive for The Counted, a yearlong project keeping track of how many people were killed by police in the US. In response to the investigation, the FBI said earlier this month that it would overhaul its system for monitoring these killings.
The Guardian’s first story in its investigation into the Chicago police facility known as Homan Square was the fourth most read story, and as with The Counted, we can see that readers not only clicked on pieces from the investigation, but also spent a long time reading them.
Along with the major investigations, readers spent most of their time active on a series of dispatches from America’s poorest towns. The first dispatch, from Beatyville, Kentucky, held readers’ attention longer than all US stories besides the first Homan Square story. The other dispatches – from Mississippi, Texas and Arizona – also had high attention time.
Essential to the investigations and hundreds of other stories was work by the interactive team, which attracted tons of readers with things like this depiction of what 1,052 mass shootings in 1,066 days looks like.
The most-read list did include some lighter stories – if you consider tweaking Coca-Cola’s social media algorithm to send out lines from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to be light. The eighth most popular story, meanwhile, was about Google’s surprise announcement that a new company called Alphabet would rule over it and other affiliated companies.
“Seriously. Sometimes I read a news article and I have to reassure myself that yes, this isn’t actually April 1st, and yes, this is a real thing that’s happening” said commenter Rashad Foux.
Sports was a powerful force too. Live coverage of the Floyd Mayweather v Manny Pacquiao boxing match in May was the most read, followed by live coverage of the men’s final at the US Open, where Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in four sets. Live coverage of the USA women’s soccer team’s 5-2 World Cup win over Japan in July was the next-most-read sports story.
There was also some breathing room from the gloom in the video section, where the fifth most watched video this year was of cats walking across the stage of the G20 summit in Turkey.
The four other most-watched videos were: the Chicago police department release of footage depicting an officer fatally shooting LaQuan McDonald; Donald Trump calling for a complete ban on Muslims entering the US (more on him soon); Charlie Sheen announcing that he is HIV positive; and – fresh from last week – Steve Harvey mistakenly crowning Miss Colombia as Miss Universe, instead of the actual winner, Miss Philippines.
On the arts desk, readers, not surprisingly, loved the preview of an exhibit of nude images of Marilyn Monroe. A story on the burden faced by Zayn Malik as a Muslim pop star was also in the top read for arts, along with the story of Bobbi Kristina Brown, who died two months after the story was published.
But the most popular arts coverage was dominated by one of the biggest music stars in the world: Nicki Minaj.
With one question at an awards show, Minaj lured in readers: “And now back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press – Miley, what’s good?”
On Twitter, people loved the initial news story. On Facebook, and in the arts section in general, Tshepo Mokoena’s critique of Taylor Swift’s “tone deaf” response to the incident dominated.
And Minaj herself loved Nosheen Iqbal’s analysis of the incident from London.
OMG, God bless The Guardian for this amazing FACTUAL article. Shame on Glamour. Yuck. https://t.co/693HCLNV6e
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 22, 2015
Speaking of entertainment, Donald Trump’s run for president saturated media coverage this year.
But while the story on his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US and, tellingly, the story on the reasons he won’t win, were extremely well read, fellow Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson won for most popular political story of the year.
The tenth most read story on the site was a look inside Carson’s home, which was replete with portraits of himself alone – and with Jesus.
But the story on whether Donald Trump was a serious presidential candidate had the most comments of all, at 4,733.
Commenter johnwallis42 concluded that the answer was no: “Of course he’s not serious, this is just a stick up, I doubt that even the Donald thought he would get this far; but a low rent huckster like him is going to ride this for all it’s worth... you’ll know when the deal is struck because he’ll disappear in a puff of hair oil scented smoke.”
