As journalists, we aim to feed our readers vegetables. Like a persistent mother, we offer in our publication what we believe will be good for you, not just what’s tasty and desirable.
But of course what you “should” read is in the eye of the editor, and it’s good to know that our offerings were at least sometimes taken with enjoyment and anticipation rather than with a dieter’s dread.
Perhaps mainly for that vain reason, we’ve compile a list of our most-read stories in 2016. But it’s also a good exercise in another way: reminding ourselves that communication is a two-way street, that we have to continue listening to our audience for us to stay relevant and you to stay informed. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to wrestle with the same existential question that dogs all online outlets: how to balance the sometimes competing needs to attract eyeballs to convey imperative information.
Unfortunately, the stories that attracted the most readers this year for us were also the most tragic. Two of the top 10 dealt with unexpected deaths of influencers in the business community, worlds apart but similar in the voids they left behind.
Randy Jackson, a giant in West Georgia, was the Kia executive known for igniting a community’s collective interest in technical education — to serve the Korean automaker reinventing the area’s industrial base, yes, but also to build a generation of skilled workers in an area of the state devastated by the collapse of the textile industry.
Narsi Narasimhan was equally revered as bridge between the Indian business communities and the Atlanta technology world, a tireless connector who pushed everyone to be better and shared his thousands of LinkedIn contacts with abandon. His seeming ubiquity made his absence all the more profoundly felt as the tributes piled up at his funeral like the flower petals admirers dropped in his casket.
Despite the fact that they draw in readers, needless to say we hope we don’t have to cover any similar occurrences in 2017.
Other stories were happier looks at how business from abroad can transform communities, from both small countries and large. In the second most-read story on the site, a firm from the small European nation of Latvia invested more in its Dublin, Ga., plant becoming the county’s largest employer. Meanwhile, Georgia finally got the China investment announcement it had been waiting for in a $500 million plant slated for LaGrange.
There were also cultural bright spots, like the knighting of the Belgian beer promoters from Decatur (No. 3) and the nerve that our story about Atlanta’s first German Christmas market struck in the runup to the holiday season (No. 9, despite only a few weeks of play on the site).
New flights, always popular in a business city that serves as the hometown of the world’s busiest airport, became even more of a hot topic when they were tinged with conflict between hometown incumbent and foreign upstart (See No. 8 below).
And India, perhaps not surprisingly given the reach of the diaspora community here, was the focus of more than one story in the top 10.
See the full list here:
Global Atlanta’s Most-Read Stories of 2016
- Kia Executive Randy Jackson Dies En Route to Seoul
- Latvian Firm to Become Largest Employer in Laurens County
- Brick Store Founders Knighted for Promoting Belgian Beer
- Sudden Death of ‘Servant Leader’ Leaves Gap in Indian Community
- Confirmed: Georgia Lands $500 Million Chinese Tire Plant
- From Country Boy to Global Entrepreneur, Uday Reddy Uses the Internet to Connect the World
- With Qatar and Turkish Arriving, the Fight for Atlanta’s India Air Travelers Is Heating Up
- Qatar Airways to Start U.S. Hiring Push in Atlanta Despite Labor Protests
- First Christkindl Market Fills Gap in Atlanta’s German Experience
- How Georgia Became a Payments Mecca