Wow. In Cultural Weekly’s first full year of publication (we began in our current format in June, 2011), with thanks to you, our growth has been tremendous.
The online world has its own terminology. Individual readers are called “uniques,” which means we don’t count you more than once, even if you come back again and again. Cultural Weekly has had 65,000 of you unique readers since January 1 of this year.
You have visited here from more than 50 nations; the top dozen countries of our readers are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, New Zealand, France, Italy, Brazil, Israel and Mexico.
What have you been reading? Here are the Top 10 stories of 2012, based on how many reads they received. You are an amazing, eclectic group of people!
10. “Why are artists embarrassed about getting money, but Jamie Dimon isn’t?” I asked earlier this year. We should keep asking this question.
9 and 8. Our first-ever writing contest. Here’s the winning entry by Rhonda Talbot, and here are the contest rules and the original story by Neil LaBute that got the ball rolling.
7. “Szymborska,” a poem by Jack Grapes in memory of a fellow poet. If a poem can get 180 comments, there is hope for all of us.
6. Artist Sol LeWitt’s advice, “Do something, do anything!” as an animated short. (The image above is from the video.)
5. Charles Bukowski’s poem, “The Laughing Heart.”
4. How did the Sundance movies perform? I answered that question with the Sundance Scorecard, which proved especially popular with people movie execs at the festival this year. I’ll be writing more about indie movies next year, too.
3. Professor Dennis Baron’s satiric diagnosis of what goes on in the brains of people who care about grammar. A few people sent emails wondering if he was kidding. He was.
2. Playwright and philosopher John Steppling’s mediation on Lars von Trier.
1. To sum it all up, no one does it better than Neil Gaiman. The most-read, or shall we say, most-watched piece of the year: Neil Gaiman’s 10 Rules for Creative Work.
We’ll have one more edition this year, which we’ll post next week. Then we’ll catch up on our sleep until January, and do it all over again.
By the way, if you’re reading this on our publication date, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012, and you’re in Los Angeles, I hope you’ll come to our gathering tonight. It will be wonderful to meet you, and for you to meet each other. Details here.
Adam Leipzig is the founder and CEO of MediaU, online career acceleration. MediaU opens the doors of access for content creation, filmmaking and television. Adam, Cultural Daily’s founder and publisher, has worked with more than 10,000 creatives in film, theatre, television, music, dance, poetry, literature, performance, photography, and design. He has been a producer, distributor or supervising executive on more than 30 films that have disrupted expectations, including A Plastic Ocean, March of the Penguins, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Dead Poets Society, Titus and A Plastic Ocean. His movies have won or been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, 11 BAFTA Awards, 2 Golden Globes, 2 Emmys, 2 Directors Guild Awards, 4 Sundance Awards and 4 Independent Spirit Awards. Adam teaches at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Adam began his career in theatre; he was the first professional dramaturg in the United States outside of New York City, and he was one of the founders of the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where he produced more than 300 plays, music, dance, and other events. Adam is CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, a company that navigates creative entrepreneurs through the Hollywood system and beyond, and a keynote speaker. Adam is the former president of National Geographic Films and senior Walt Disney Studios executive. He has also served in senior capacities at CreativeFuture, a non-profit organization that advocates for the creative community. Adam is is the author of ‘Inside Track for Independent Filmmakers ’ and co-author of the all-in-one resource for college students and emerging filmmakers 'Filmmaking in Action: Your Guide to the Skills and Craft' (Macmillan). (Photo by Jordan Ancel)