Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for investigative journalism is not straight forward to nail down. Media entrepreneurs need to show page views, retention rates, reader-revenue, engagement and other such metrics. Usually KPIs in journalism fall short of the complexity and nuance that each story or what an overall editorial strategy seeks to accomplish for the readership it serves. Even so, these metrics give us feedback from readers, what strikes home, and what does not sell.
In this edition, I tried to pick the most read in the more than 100 editions we published this year. In general, despite the long form nature of our journalism, we continue to see strong reader interest in the technical details and the big picture – hallmarks of our signature reporting. It was not easy to leave my favorite stories behind in this list. While most of our stories are received well, some perform better than others as explained also by the diversity in our audience, 6,000+ readers in 150 countries.
Here we present our most read top 15 editions in terms of the number of page views.
And in case you missed this last year, I also share my most memorable stories in 2024.
(Reverse chronological order only, not based ranking of page views)