Yearender 2022: What you read on our site this year

In India, the Uttar Pradesh elections in March garnered most interest followed by the Union Budget and political crisis in Maharashtra. The elections in Gujarat, Punjab and Himachal did not have the kind of pan-India appeal that Yogi Adityanath’s re-election had. Interestingly, the Delhi municipal corporation elections were watched keenly across the country given how it was projected as a tussle between the ruling party and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has become the dominant player in the national capital now. This also sets the stage for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections in 2023.

A kid dressed as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal shows a victory sign while celebrating the results of MCD elections at the AAP headquarters in New Delhi on December 7, 2022. (Express by Amit Mehra)

In the post-Covid scheme of things, healthy living seems to have become an important aspect for most people. Our story on how your bathing habits can affect digestion set so many new records. In fact, it was read by millions of people more than our explainer on CT-value, which was the top read story last year.

Two untimely deaths also seemed to have rattled India this year. The car accident that resulted in the death of industrialist Cyrus Mistry and singer KK’s death were among the top read stories this year.

BJP was the political entity that had the most interest through the year, followed by the Congress while Delhi and Mumbai were the locations generating the most interest with their stories followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka.

BJP supporters during PM Narendra Modi’s election campaign in Gujarat’s Kheda. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)

No surprises for guessing the most popular person of the year — Narendra Modi — though the volume of interest seems to have come down a bit. The second most popular person as per our analytics was Alia Bhat, who incidentally was our guest at Express Adda this year.

The year 2022 was also the first we had with a full digital subscription, and we learnt how our most loyal users had a very different reading behaviour from the masses. Express subscribers love reading our Editorials and Opinions daily, also frequent our new Political Pulse and UPSC sections.

The most popular story among paid readers was P Vaidyanathan Iyer’s explainer on the Old Pension Scheme.

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The other popular premium stories among this growing group of readers were our research stories on the conflicts between Nehru and Ambedkar and Chola dynasty. Our new premium Pages from the Past podcast series on the handful of princely states that refused to join India was also very popular among this set, along with their daily crosswords and sudoku.

A Ukrainian soldier in Krymske, which was shelled by separatists. (NYT)

Our set of registered users meanwhile found the entertainment and health sections very interesting over the year. The most popular story with this audience was Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Piliavsky’s open letter to Indians. Anil Dias’s story on chess grandmaster S L Narayanan’s humiliation at the Bundesliga chess league was also very popular among this set of readers.

Of our hundreds of million of readers a large section come to us at least once in two days as per data from analytics tool Chartbeat, spending much more time on the site and reading way for more stories than others. This is just a testament of the exciting times we live in, on where online readers are becoming more loyal and more demanding. And this ensures we stick to our promise for many more years to the come, the promise that we will have more stories for you every day.