“It’s that time of year, again, when news organizations are scrambling to determine which stories and screaming headlines attracted the most attention from its readers. As a way to get the ball rolling, I contacted some leading news organizations and asked them to provide the online story that generated the most page views on their Web Sites over the last year. Here, then [are several of the] responses that came back from those organizations considerate enough to return my emails.

• “The New York Times: The story with the most page views on NYTimes.com between January 1 through Dec 5, 2011 was Sustainable Love By Tara Parker-Pope, an essay on what makes a happy marriage. The article appeared in the Times’ print edition on January 2, 2011.
• The Wall Street Journal: The most popular story at WSJ.com for 2011 was an essay entitled: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior which were excerpts from author Amy Chua’s new book: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, a book that caused a great deal of controversy earlier this year.
• ABC: According a company spokesperson, the top story for 2011 on ABCNews.com was a story about the 50 most popular women on the Internet. The article was originally published on May 6, 2010. The two other top stories for 2011 at ABCNews.com was the killing of Osama bin Laden published on May 1, 2011; and the obituary of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, published on October 5, 2011.