Special Report: Analyzing Chartbeat’s Most Engaging Stories of 2023
And the writer behind a whopping 5 of the 105 stories on the list
Happy Thursday! And welcome to a special edition of Business Side.
Chartbeat just released its report on the most engaging stories of 2023 – among those published by media companies that use its analytics platform. The report provides an interesting glimpse into what’s attracting attention on the Internet.
In today’s edition of Business Side, we’ll examine the list of top stories. In addition to sorting the list by publisher, we also categorized the stories by Type (news, feature, explainer) and by Topic (crime, human interest, politics, etc.). These categorizations are imperfect of course, but they point to interesting high-level insights. If you’d like a copy of our spreadsheet with all the data, just send me a note.
Let’s dig into it.
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Here is how many of the stories fall into each topic:
Takeaways:
It’s no surprise that tragedy is attracting attention – through stories about crime, memorials or obituaries, the Titan submarine, natural disasters, and war. Crime stories included breaking news about unfolding events, as well as “true crime”-style features. Of the Memorial or Obituary pieces, more than half were about Matthew Perry. And of stories about war, almost all concerned the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Human Interest stories, which were categorized as such if they were features about individuals who aren’t public figures, spanned tales of travel, love, and unlikely circumstances.
Here is how many stories fall into each “type” of piece:
Takeaways:
The results again confirm how news wins attention. Top topics within News were Crime, Memorial, Titan Submarine, and Weather & Natural Disasters.
Top topics within Features were Human Interest, Politics, Crime, and Culture & Celebrity.
And here is how many stories each publisher has on the list:
Takeaways:
CNN topped the list, powered by crime news and human interest features.
BBC came in second, driven primarily by news stories.
Fox News came in third, driven by a mix of news and features.
A Star Performer:
One writer, CNN’s Francesca Street, is responsible for an incredible five of the stories on the list. Street is an expert at telling charming love stories:
“She broke up with her boyfriend and moved in with a man she’d known for 3 weeks. Here’s what happened” (link)
“They had a teenage summer romance. Here’s what happened when they reunited years later” (link)
“They met while hiking and fell in love. Two months later she was diagnosed with cancer” (link)
“They fell in love backpacking through Europe then they lost each other. Here’s how they’ve ended up married for 24 years” (link)
“She got the last seat on a flight next to a stranger. They’ve been married for 40 years” (link)
If you’ll forgive a sentimental moment: In a list dominated by tragedy, it’s nice to see love peaking through.
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