Prince George MLA and provincial jobs minister Shirley Bond may have been the local newsmaker of 2013, as chosen by our readers, but perhaps the real newsmaker of the year was Nicole McPherson.
The Prince George woman died suddenly in July while staying in Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver. The pregnant 37-year-old had been in Vancouver since May at the urging of her doctors who wanted to keep her under the constant supervision of specialists during her problematic pregnancy.
Reporter Peter James wrote Not Coming Home, an in-depth feature about McPherson, her grieving husband Mike and their children in July. In the paper, the story and photographs filled up both the front page and page 3.
Online, however, the story exploded. It was, far and away, the most-read story on the Citizen's website last year, more than doubling the second-most read story. When we shared it on our Facebook page, the story went viral.
What's most surprising about this story being so popular online is that it breaks a popular belief that only brief stories will be read since the consumers of online news have a short attention span and can't be bothered to actually invest in the time and effort to read a 1,500 word-plus story.
It's gratifying to realize that longer stories, well-written and sensitively told, also have an audience online.
On the other hand, there's nothing surprising that McPherson's story was so well read online. Google Analytics makes clear to the operator of any news website that the most popular stories usually have two things in common - they are unique to that website (as the McPherson story was) and they feature human suffering (as the McPherson story did).
The rest of the Citizen website's top 10 most-read stories for 2013 went like this:
2. Caution Urged After Sexual Assault, after a woman was attacked in Lorne Park in May.
3. Identity of Human Remains Confirmed, also from May, when the remains of a man found earlier in the month near the Greenway Trail was tied to a 22-year-old man who had been missing since 2008.
4. Retail Rumours Run Aground, about which stores were confirmed to be coming to Prince George (Old Navy and Wholesale Sports) and which were just rumours (The Gap and Pier 1).
5. 'I'm Slowing Getting Back Into A Glamourous Life,' a feature about the recovery of Travis Shaw, better known by his drag queen persona Foxy De-Roxy, after surgery to remove a brain tumor.
6. Ratte's Murder Appeal Denied. With major TV investigations by Dateline NBC and The Fifth Estate, it's no surprise this story ranked so high.
7. Motorcyclist Dead After Collision With Moose.
8. Woman Killed In Early Morning Rollover.
9. Man Shoots Himself Outside of Hospital.
10. Oil Spills Can Benefit Economy, Panel Told.
Only at number 10 does a story about the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline appear. There is nothing in the top 10 about the coroners inquest into the death of Greg Matters, the provincial election or anything to do with municipal politics (core review, new city manager, city councillor doesn't pay his municipal tax for three years, downtown parking, Pine Valley, performing arts centre and so on).
Convictions for heinous crimes also didn't make the list, including Lloyd William Cook for unlawful confinement and indignity to a dead body in the January 2000 death of his stepson, Adrian Real Bergeron for seriously wounding a Crown lawyer on the steps of the courthouse, and a man sentenced to 14 years in prison after subjecting his daughters and son to years of sexual abuse.
What the list does reveal are the habits of the casual and infrequent news consumer. These readers want news about current events but they're not so interested in issues and politics. They like to read about crimes, accidents and tragedy but not what goes on in the courts.
There's no other way to explain how a story that only broke on Dec. 28, the shooting death outside of the hospital, catapults to number nine of top-read online stories for the entire year.
Or how the sudden death of a pregnant mother touched so many online readers so deeply.
