The Top Twenty Five Bella Articles of 2018

The Top Twenty Five Bella articles of 2018 …

SCL – a Very British Coup by Liam O Hare
Revealed: The emails between Boris’s Foreign Office and Analytica by Liam O Hare
Artwash, Over-Tourism and Edinburgh by Mike Small
Time to Wake Up and Ask Some Difficult Questions about the SNP and Independence by Gerry Hassan
Thousands Attended, Millions Didn’t by Jonathan Shafi
On Scottish Fishing by Graeme Goodall
On Myths of Genocide by Mike Small
The Last Days of Creative Scotland by Neil Cooper
Selling Scotland’s local television to That’s TV is a travesty by Dale McEwan
Good Scots by Mike Small
A Message from the Thought Police by Mike Small
On Indigenous Language, Culture, Education by Griogair Labhruidh
In Our Time but not ‘in our voice’ by Iain McKinnon
Who Pays the Piper? Artwashing and the Planned Social Cleansing of Leith by Stephen Pritchard
Your Land is My Land: Perspectives from an Immigrant by Raman Mundair
Some Problems with Sleep in the Park by Mike Small
Top Thirty Toxic Tories by Cameron Archibald
Gender Recognition – it’s not what you think by Jennie Kermode
The Lanarkshire Village That Defied An Empire More by Liam Turbett
Nothing Exceptional: Scottish Housing Associations and the Erasure of Scottish Social Housing by Neil Gray
Brillo’s Brexit and the Museum of Communist Terror by Mike Small
Women of Independence: the Unexpected Legacy by Vonny Leclerc
The Russians Aren’t Coming by Mike Small
Moving to Yes by Iain Black
In Praise of Shitholes by Mike Small

Comments (5)

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  1. Elaine Fraser says:

    Happy New Year Bella.

    Can I ask how these were deemed the ‘top’ articles? Does it go by how many comments they received ?

    1. Hi Elaine – these were the top by the number of readers. There’s other ways to judge than numbers though … and often niche or otherwise really interesting articles dont get the same traffic as more controversial ones… so sometimes these were published and were part of a raging debate going on that week.

      For example there’s some really great pieces published this year that didn’t get the readership (I thought) they deserved.

      The list tells us a few things – that when we (Bella) does investigative journalism there s great appetite for that – that we dont have enough women writers yet? Its good to see issues like fishing, policy issues like housing and cultural issues like gaelic getting big readerships though.

  2. Christopher Martin White says:

    Hi. Happy 2019.
    Personally, I think that successful posts are best judged on the number of comments generated.
    I may well read an article but not comment. It could be for a number of reasons. The article may not be written to elicit comments.
    The reader may not have finished the article.
    I gather that only the editorial staff get to see the reader numbers ?
    Your post about there not being enough women writers. Is this due to a lack of submissions ?
    I like and support Bella Caledonia and will continue to read and comment.
    All the best. Chris.

    1. Hi Chris – yeah there’s definitely different ways to judge an articles ‘success’ and the conversation it generates is one of them, though sometimes that conversation happens on Twitter or on Facebook or Instagram.

      Just reader numbers alone aren’t a great guide (Jeffrey Archer sold a lot of books …)

      1. Christopher White says:

        Poor old Jeffers. He wrote some great stuff in prison.

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