Top clicks on Itemlive in 2012

LYNN – While the Item’s editors chose development and elections as some of 2012’s top stories for the impact they had on the community, our readers on itemlive.com had some different ideas about what stories deserved to be most read.This is part of a series of articles examining how events of 2012 shaped Greater Lynn communities and what the events may mean for 2013.Based on statistics on clicks per story on itemlive.com , 2012 was a year for crime, breaking news, and drama among parents and educators.View top 10 web stories and clicksOur web readers chose a drawn-out and public fight about a local youth hockey league as 2012’s top story. Almost 23,000 people read the initial story about Lynn natives accusing their 9-year-old son’s hockey coach of aggressive behavior in what quickly became a he-said-she-said, finger-pointing story.Our reporters wrote more than one story this year about knife violence, but one in particular stood out among web readers: More than 19,000 people clicked on a short story about a man who allegedly chased a woman all the way into the Lynn Police Department lobby wielding a large kitchen knife. Police promptly arrested him.Crime stayed in the spotlight with a ghastly double homicide in which a Lynn man was accused of murdering his mother and grandmother and dumping their bodies behind a Saugus Elementary School in May (a story The Daily Item’s editors also picked for the top 10 overall). We had been covering the story all day, but it didn’t reach off-the-charts web statistics until our reporters revealed the murdered were Lynners. Around 14,805 people clicked on that breaking news report.And 12,660 people read our breaking news coverage of a high-speed chase through the streets of Lynn this month, keeping abreast of minute-by-minute developments from reporters Cyrus Moulton and Thor Jourgensen and watching a video reporter Matt Tempesta took from outside our office window of the chase.State Police later said that the man arrested in the chase had “no regard for human life.”When Lynn Police took the life of 23-year-old Brandon Payne in July, 11,458 people clicked on the original breaking news story.And more than 14,000 people read a story that broke in February about a Lynn woman whom police accused of stealing $64 in soda cans and trying to feed them into a digital can-return machine in exchange for money.A court story of a different tune also made our most-read list. Almost 15,000 people read a story published on Saturday about the https://newitemlive.wpengine.com/articles/2012/08/04/news/news01.txt”>Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that courts can draw on defendants’ retirement accounts, significant others and families to pay for public defenders before a court will issue a free public defender.The rest of the top 10 most-read stories on itemlive.com focus on Lynn’s youth. National news outlets descended on Lynn to follow up on a Daily Item story about a Lynn English High School student who was reprimanded for wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “All the cool girls are lesbians.” More than 11,722 people joined in on the conversation online.Readers agreed with The Daily Item’s editors that the tragic death of Dillon McManus, who died after being hit by a Hummer while crossing a Lynn street with his twin brother, was a high-profile story. About 11,352 people logged onto itemlive.com on a Saturday to read the news that Dillon had died and doctors were going to harvest his organs, leaving his twin brother to awake from a coma to the bad news.And more than 10,200 web readers agreed with Item editors that a sensational videotaped fight among Lynn English girls, which took place in a Lynn park and went viral after it was posted to YouTube, deserved to make the top 10 list.That story rounded out this list of sensational crime, tragedy and public fights that played out on itemlive.com, a list directly influenced by what you clicked on.Thanks for reading.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected]