Piece of Mind: The Sun shines light on LCF

Over the course of a year, the Valley Sun brings to its readers several hundred news items. These include breaking news, coverage of local government and school meetings, news briefs and feature stories of La Cañada residents engaged in activities we believe will be of interest to our readers. These items appear in the first section of our paper, usually in about four-to-five pages, before we move into our opinion page, society articles and sports coverage. They are also posted to our website.

Every year, as the Earth nears its completion of another trip around the Sun, we take a look at the stories we’ve published during the previous 12 months that we think are of high importance to the fabric of life in La Cañada. Depending upon the year, our Top 10 list might include a natural disaster or two, a public-safety threat such as a series of armed bank robberies, a precipitous drop in funding for one of our institutions such as our schools or JPL (I am knocking on wood with one hand as I type this with the other, because we escaped any of those this year), and more upbeat stories, along the lines, say, of a new commercial development in the heart of the city.

In the unlikely event you skipped our news section today and moved directly to Forum, I don’t want to completely spoil for you the all items we identified as the 2016 news that most affected La Cañada Flintridge. Reporter Sara Cardine is working on that story in the cubicle next to mine while I’m focusing here on the stories that got the most clicks on our website, lacanadaonline.com.

One might expect that if an item was highly popular on our website this year, it surely must belong in the Top 10 of 2016 news stories. Indeed, when it came to the unquestionably biggest story to hit our town this past year, the sudden announcement of the closure of homegrown Sport Chalet retail chain, it was not only No. 1 in our minds — our web stats showed it also gained the most eyes online.

Like that story, at least a couple of others we considered to be important in the scheme of things also received a lot of page views online. But when we reviewed a list provided to us by our Web editor, Brian Park, we learned the majority of the 10 stories that received the most page views online in 2016 diverged from our own Top 10 news picks.

One of the stories that surprised us the most in its sustained popularity was Cardine’s late April feature on Honeybird, the then-new eatery on Foothill Boulevard. That piece, which introduces us to Chef Phil Lee and the fried chicken and other fare offered there, continues to be read online, long after news stories have faded from the collective mind.

It’s never a big surprise when articles about our city’s float entry in the Rose Parade is a big hit online. Last January, our story on how well LCF’s float, “Up a Creek,” performed in the Rose Parade was very popular with our online readers. But we’re still scratching our heads over how a relatively short story we published in February about the Professional Disc Golf Assn.’s 38th Annual Wintertime Open held at Hahamongna Park was the fourth most read story on our website this year. That must have been shared on every Frisbee golf enthusiast’s Facebook page around the globe to have drawn so much interest.

Other articles that people unexpectedly swarmed to online included a January 2016 news item about a woman who was grazed by a car in a hit-and-run incident when she was walking in a crosswalk near St. Francis High School, an article that same month about the Thursday Club’s debutantes who had just been feted at the December 2015 Bal Blanc de Noel and a summer piece about an area business enterprise called the Art Room.

I asked Park for his take on our Web traffic this past year. Here’s an excerpt of his emailed reply:

“The Sport Chalet story drew the most readers to our site in 2016 for obvious reasons. The shuttering of a business with as big of a name as Sport Chalet is going to draw heavy interest from beyond La Cañada’s borders. Online readers throughout the Southland were drawn to the story.

“As for strictly local stories, especially in a community like La Cañada Flintridge, social media is often the major driver of page views. The Honeybird story is a perfect example. Most of its views were generated by shares on Facebook. Bacon and cheddar biscuits can do that.”

As The Sun begins yet another rotation around town in 2017, we thank you for your readership, whether it’s of our print version or online. We’ll continue to shine our light on the issues we think are of utmost importance, but pledge to continue to have enough softer fare to satisfy the most varied La Cañada palate that we hope you’ll continue to share on social media. Happy New Year!

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CAROL CORMACI is the managing editor. Email her at carol.cormaci@latimes.com.