Let us be the last to say it: 2017 was not a very good year.
That's very, very clear when you look at the most-read stories on wweek.com from the past year, which we tabulated this afternoon. A few weeks ago, we brought you a list of the days that shook the city last year, and, yes, most of those days were bad. But in order to really appreciate just how bad things were in Portland last year, you've gotta look at the tape.
The list of our most-read stories is below, with links. It's pretty gloomy. There was a huge forest fire—the silver lining is that at least nobody was killed. There was a violent incident that lead to two deaths on the MAX train. There were Nazis at brewpubs. There were unhoused people dying tragically in the winter cold.
Two chill surfer buddies did make some really good breakfast burritos… and got death threats for it.
The only things on the entire top 20 list that could be considered "good news" were our photo post from the World Naked Bike Ride and the existence of a cool hidden park that rich people don't want you to know about. Thank God for naked people and parks—two things that broke up the bleakness around here.
We use Google Analytics to track traffic here at WW and present weekly reports on traffic that helps our reporters and editors understand what readers care about. We're sharing some of that data with you today in the interest of transparency and because we think you'll find it interesting.
Wweek.com finished the year 2017 with 26,346,505 pageviews. That's up a massive 31% from the 18,280,814 pageviews we had in 2016.
September was the biggest month in the history of our site, as readers churned through 3,980,762 times as they followed the raging forest fire in the Gorge. In May, there were 3,566,540 pageviews as readers tuned in for information about the horrific incident on the MAX, the subject of the most-read story of the year and in the history of our website. Wweek.com had 13.1 million pageviews in the second half of the year and 13.2 million in the first half of the year.
While we get a healthy amount of traffic directly to our site, most of our traffic is referred from social media. In 2016, our top source of traffic was Facebook (44.1%), followed by Google (24.5%), Twitter (4.8%), Reddit (1.9%) and Yahoo (0.9%). In 2017, while the pie of traffic expanded, Facebook remained our top source of traffic (45%), with Google (24.6%), Twitter (5.4%), Google News (1.6%) and Reddit (1.0%) rounding out the top five.
Here's the top 20 from the year.
- Witnesses: Man Cut the Throats of Two MAX Passengers Who Tried to Stop Anti-Muslim Bullying of Women on Northeast Portland Train, 1,384,856
- Woman Witnessed Teen Tossing Firecrackers Into Gorge: “There Was a Whole Group of Kids Who Found It Funny To Do This,” 633,846
- Butts, Balls and Boobs: Photos from the Portland 2017 World Naked Bike Ride, 421,265
- Idiot With Fireworks Starts Columbia River Gorge Fire That Strands 150 Hikers and Threatens Town of Cascade Locks, 383,917
- Multnomah Falls Engulfed in Flames as Out-of-Control Wildfire Races West Through Gorge, 375,932
- Hikers Say the Columbia River Gorge is Burning Because Teenage Boys Were Tossing Firecrackers Off a Cliff, 289,025
- A Baby is Dead After Being Found With His Homeless Mother at a Portland Bus Stop, 279,914
- Jeff Merkley Defies Senate Republican Leader by Reading Coretta Scott King’s Words on the Floor of Congress, 228,828
- Good News: Multnomah Falls is Still Green and Mostly Unscathed, and the Columbia River Gorge Wildfire Could Help Wildlife “Flourish,” 193,208
- Kooks Serves Pop-Up Breakfast Burritos With Handmade Tortillas Out of a Food Cart on Cesar Chavez, 140,079
- Anti-Trump Women’s March Loses the Support of the NAACP of Portland After Leaders Refused to Talk About Race, 136,886
- The Man Accused of MAX Double Murder Is a Portland White Supremacist Who Delivered Nazi Salutes and Racial Slurs at a “Free Speech” Rally Last Month, 134,782
- Portland Woman Who Died of Hypothermia Was Evicted for Being Late on $338 in Rent, 122,761
- Ash Falls Like Snow Across Portland as Wildfire Tears Through the Columbia River Gorge, 98,769
- Oregon State Police Obtained Cellphone Video From Firecracker-Throwing Teens Suspected of Starting the Columbia River Gorge Fire, 94,706
- Video: Nazis Thrown Out Of Portland’s Lucky Lab Beer Hall, 93,198
- In the Portland Area’s Wealthiest Neighborhood Lies a Hidden, Public Scottish Garden As Large as the Japanese Garden, 92,015
- The Bundy Gang is Found Not Guilty, 90,081
- What It’s Like to Betray Antifa to the Cops—and Get Caught, 89,989
- Lake Oswego “March 4 Trump” Devolves Into Incoherent Animal Noises, 82,200