• Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series counting down the top five Kane County Connects stories of 2014.

OK, we waited a little too long to do a traditional “Top 10 Stories of 2014” series, so we’re just going to have to settle for the top five.

As I’ve said many o’ time in our weekly roundup, these are the top five most-viewed articles of the year, not necessarily the ones I think were most important or best written. There are a few provisos and a couple quid pro quo, as well.

The top five does not include any of stories we posted prior to transitioning from the kanecountyconnected.com URL to kanecountyconnects. While the early stories did successfully migrate to the new URL, their rankings in the Site Stats did not. I do recall one story that was by far the most-viewed, but I won’t include it in the top five, since I have no idea how many others from our early endeavor might have qualified.

All that’s probably a little too “Inside Baseball” for anyone to care about. Suffice it to say that these are the “top five” since Aug. 1.

Since we don’t have the drama of the full “top 10,” here’s a countdown to our No. 5 article of the half-year, starting with the 10th-most-read article:

(10) St. Charles Township Man Charged With Massive, Indoor Cannabis-Grow Operation

(9) Data Breach at Jewel: What You Can Do

(8) Now Is Your Chance to Weigh in on SB16 School Funding

(7) Say It Ain’t So: Cubs Leaving Kane County Cougars

(6) CORRECTION: 70 MPH Speed Limit Could Affect I-88, I-90 in Kane County

And now, with a little drumroll, please, the No. 5 most read story of 2014 is …

(5) UPDATE: Kramer Is New Sheriff, Batavia Referendum Falls — And More Election Results for Kane County

This article was simply a summary of who won and who didn’t, which referendums won and which didn’t, in the Nov. 4 elections, adding the totals from the Kane County Clerk’s Office election results webpages and the Aurora Election Commission election results pages.

In general, you like your election stories. They are typically among the most-read.

I see a number of similarities in the year’s top articles on Kane County Connects, and I’ll point them out a little later. But in the meantime, read the remainder of this countdown series and let me know what you think. What do YOU think are the common themes of the stories that are most-read? How are they the same or different? Did the headline or time of posting affect the outcome?

This is the kind of data we use to decide what to do next. So, help us out. If you haven’t already done so, fill out of Kane County Connects Reader Survey, and let us know what you think by emailing nagelrick@co.kane.il.us.

Rick Nagel
Outreach Coordinator
Dec. 24, 2014