Train-death coverage drives traffic

The awful news last Monday that a woman had been struck and killed on tracks near the Chico State campus and the subsequent revelation that she had been a student at the university sent a record number of readers to theorion.com for information about the tragedy.

It's impossible to know how many of the 20,983 views of the story, or the 6,259 visits to the follow-up report, can be attributed to social-media posts by others and a local TV report about a gruesome photo that accompanied the original story (and was quickly taken down, accompanied by an apology). It is clear that the community turned to theorion.com to get the facts about what happened. (It's worth noting that the number of hits the original photo received wasn't enough to make the list of "most viewed" elements on the website.)

Visits to theorion.com from last Monday through Sunday totaled 30,353, according to analytics recorded by the newspaper's web hosting service, BlueHost. That's far and away the busiest traffic week ever. 

The other top-ranked stories last week were:

Sorority bands together to help fallen sister - 2,483 views
Navigating bro speak (cartoon) - 2,423
Gang shooting wrongly reflects Hmong community - 2,327
Stigma with high numbers of sexual partners (O-Face column)  - 1,666