The top 10 posts of 2024: the top 5
The five most read posts of last year were very concerned with audience, the fate of WordPress — and a long gone lads' mag.
Welcome back, pop pickers, to the final part of our Top 10 countdown. It's late and yes, I am channeling the spirit of the ancient TV show Top of the Pops. And yes, I am indeed old, thanks for asking.
What offerings from my thinkmeats attracted the most traffic in the late, unlamented year-of-our-Lord 2024? And why did a well-known gender critical feminist and philosopher mildly irritate me?
Read on to find out…
5: The Media Inflection Point: a manifesto for audience centricity
There are two pieces in the top 5 which are basically me dumping out long-held theories about the future of the media from my head, and into the internet. This was an exploration of my thesis that we're going through a profound transformation of the publishing ecosystem, which will leave us with a handful of massive international publishers and a swarm of smaller publishers, from one-person Substack/Ghost publishers upwards. But the only way those smaller publishers will survive is by putting audience needs right at the heart of what they do.
The first contact with a new reader might be via search and social, but if you don't start building a relationship with them that you control from day one, your business will always be dependent on others.
I'm still a believer in this theory. And events since I wrote this have only firmed up my opinion.
Adam Tinworth
4: What the hell is happening at Automattic (part 2)?
This caught me by surprise — shows how much I've been paying attention — but the next two stories are about WordPress. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and, is it transpired, in much more personal control of WordPress in all its forms that most of us realised, launched a blistering attack on WPEngine, a major supplier of WordPress hosting. But the story wouldn't stop there…
Adam Tinworth
3: WordPress just lost its default status for publishers
As WP Engine failed to capitulate to Matt's demands, he started using the infrastructure he controls to punish them. He cut them off from the plugin and themes installing and updating systems hosted on wordpress.org, and then took control of one of their plugins. But, of course, that didn't just affect the host — it affected all the businesses hosting with WP Engine.
And suddenly one of the most widely used CMSes in journalism looked a lot less like the secure, safe platform we'd all assumed it to be. The conflict is now wending its way through the courts, and the WordPress community is split. If your publication is on WordPress, you need to be watching this.
(Don't worry, I love a bit of drama, and I'll be tracking what happens in the coming months.)
Adam Tinworth
2: Audience Engagement: two words, both matter
This was a surprise: a piece written in the dying weeks of the year was able to claim the #2 spot. In essence, this was pointing out that whenever a major new trend emerges in journalism, so too does a cargo cult version of it.
And there's very much a cargo cult version of audience work emerging now, which is all about numbers and bundling and conversion rates and things that are important — but are not actual audience work. They're ways of measuring audience work, or capitalising on it. But at the heart of audience is people, and that really matters, if you want a genuinely engaged relationship.
Adam Tinworth
1: Loaded and the gonzo early days of the Lads Mags
This, which I wrote in 2023, has become a classic evergreen piece of content. A regular trickle of traffic every single week, adding up to something substantial over the year. There was a big spike of traffic in the autumn, when Loaded was back in the news in its reborn form, but the majority of this placement comes from gold old fashioned search traffic.
The one thing that didn't contribute to this was Kathleen Stock's piece about Loaded for Unherd, where she quoted, but mischaracterised, me:
One enthusiastic blogger describes it as “swashbuckling, provocative, exciting writing … aimed at men, but not in a patronising, lowest common denominator way”. (Inspired by loaded, he also describes himself as having gone on “to create the gonzo school of property journalism during my time at Estates Gazette”.)
Rather glossing over the whole “journalist and journalism lecturer” thing there, aren't you Dr Stock? I mean I am an enthusiastic blogger, but I like to think I'm a bit more than that…
And, of course, she didn't link to the piece she was quoting from. So, I'm returning the non-favour. If you really want to read it, Googling “Kathleen Stock Unherd Loaded” will do the trick.
Adam Tinworth
And there, we close the door on 2024. It was a very difficult year for me personally, for reasons I may or may not go into at a later point. I really, profoundly hope that 2025 will be better.
But the one consistently bright spot in it, aside from my family, has been you: my readers. And for all of you, the ones who pay to support the site, the ones who just read, the ones who email me, and the ones who comment: thank you.
I don't make a lot from this site – certainly if I analysed the time I spend on it against the amount I make, I'd quit tomorrow. But, while I nurture hopes that one day it'll be a bigger part of my income, I'm here for the very long term. One Man & His Blog turns 22 this year. It's finally becoming an adult…
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