Here Are the 100 Most Read News Stories of 2023
(Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)
Chartbeat, a webpage analytics company popular with newsrooms, recently released its annual round-up of the 100 most-read news stories of 2023, ranked by how much time readers spent on the article.
The list noted that the top themes of this year’s most engaged stories were: “True Crime,” “Catastrophe,” “Memorial,” “War,” and “Connection.”
The “Memorial” category accounted for the most-read individual story of the year, the LA Times’s report on the passing of Friends star Mathew Perry.
“The Los Angeles Times’ obituary for ‘Friends star’ Matthew Perry is our most engaging story of 2023. Audiences spent more than 45 million minutes engaging with tributes to the actor on our list,” noted the list’s summary, adding:
In a previous interview with the Los Angeles Times, Perry said he wanted to be remembered “As a guy who lived life, loved well, lived well and helped people.”
Other notable figures we paid tribute to this year include Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor, and former First Lady, Rosalynn Carter.
The LA Times also notched the second most read story of the year, a news report on a mass shooting in southern California at the beginning of the year, “Authorities identify 72-year-old man as suspected gunman in Lunar New Year mass shooting.”
CNN’s Francesca Street scored the third most-read story of the year with a unique travel romance article titled, “She broke up with her boyfriend and moved in with a man she’d known for 3 weeks. Here’s what happened next.”
Fox News’s Hannah Ray Lambert came in with the fourth most-read story for the year, titled, “Handyman turns the tables on squatters who took over his mother’s house.”
ESPN’s Alaina Getzenberg rounded out the top five with her report, “Damar Hamlin in critical condition after suffering cardiac arrest; Bills-Bengals postponed.”
A BBC explainer on the Israel-Hamas War landed in 6th place for the year, while CNN’s report titled, “Titanic-bound submersible suffered ‘catastrophic implosion.’ The US Navy detected an implosion Sunday and told rescuers, an official tells CNN,” landed in 7th.
The list’s summary noted that “9 stories from 7 different outlets on the topic” made the top 100 stories from the year and “audiences spent more than 60 million minutes engaging with them.”
“Tropical Storms Hilary and Idalia and fires in Maui and Canada” were other “Catastrophe” themed stories that made the list along with the submersible implosion.
The number 8 story on the list was from CNN and fell under the “Connection” theme, titled, “A migrant crossed the border and found a scared, 9-year-old Arizona boy alone in the desert. The encounter changed them both.”
The number 9 story was from the Washington Post’s Richard Sima, titled, “A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry.”
The LA Times landed its third top ten story on the list with the 10th most read story of the year, a report on Tropical Storm Hillary, “‘Widespread flooding’ expected as intense Hilary pounds Southern California.” CNN also had three stories in the top ten, the only other outlet to have more than one.
Read the full list of the top 100 stories of the year here.
