Dear AlterNet Reader: Top Ten Stories

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted October 4, 2006.

In case you haven't noticed, on the lower right-hand side of AlterNet's front page sits our constantly-updated list of the articles you have read the most. Each Friday, if you sign up, we email you a list of the ten most popular stories each week. In the office, we're always guessing which stories will get the most traffic.

In that box on the front page, you can also check out the most emailed articles, as well as the most commented on. Some of our stories get more than 500 reader responses, and more than 23,000 readers are registered to comment. Often, the most commented are quite different than the most read. Case in point: the two most controversial discussions at this moment are "Discrimination Against the Female Brain" and "Putting Party Before Predators: Why Didn't GOP Leaders Stop Foley?"

Sometimes, our videos are more popular than our stories -- and over the past two months, Denis Leary Telling Mel Gibson to Shove It was the most popular, watched by more than 215,000 people.

Since you, the reader, only see the top stories for any given week, we thought you might like to see how they stack up over a month or two. Below are the top ten stories by popularity over the past two months. Needless to say, the animosity towards George Bush leads the way. But concern about the radical right, women's long-term sex drive, lessons from the London airline bombing plot, and war profiteers all attract a lot of interest from our readers.

Here are the top ten most popular stories since August 1:

• Where Bush's Arrogance Has Taken Us
  By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown, August 23, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40678
  
• Lobbying for Armageddon
  By Sarah Posner, AlterNet, August 3, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/39748
  
• The Loose Cannon of 9/11
  By Michael Slenske, SMITH Magazine, August 21, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40476
  
• The Long Dive of a Woman's Sex Drive
  By Liz Langley, AlterNet, August 26, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40854
  
• Nine Ways Republicans Are Ruining the Country
  By Larry Beinhart, BuzzFlash, August 17, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40438
  
• Why Bush's Stupidity Is a Threat
  By Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect, August 2, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/39770
  
• Public Stoning: Not Just for the Taliban Anymore
  By John Sugg, Creative Loafing (Atlanta), August 15, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40318
  
• Six Lessons from the London Airline Bombing Plot
  By John Tirman, AlterNet, August 12, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/40221
  
• What's Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?
  By Jeff Cohen, AlterNet, September 23, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/42028
  
• The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers
  By Charlie Cray, AlterNet, September 5, 2006
  http://www.alternet.org/story/41083
  

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Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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