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The 20 most popular Nieman Lab posts of 2011

The New York Times, word clouds, paywalls, b.s. goggles, Twitter, Facebook — here are the posts that generated the most traffic on Nieman Lab this year.

By Joshua Benton @jbenton Dec. 28, 2011, 11 a.m.

With the final hours of 2011 ticking away, here’s a look back at the 20 most popular posts, in terms of pageviews, here at the Nieman Journalism Lab. One consistent thread: You guys like reading about The New York Times! Enjoy the rest of this year and see you in 2012.

1. That was quick: Four lines of code is all it takes for The New York Times’ paywall to come tumbling down (March 21, Joshua Benton)

2. Image as interest: How the Pepper Spray Cop could change the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street (Nov. 21, Megan Garber)

3. The New York Times imagines the kitchen table of the future (Aug. 30, Garber)

4. Word clouds considered harmful (Oct. 13, Jacob Harris)

5. Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news (Nov. 22, Andrew Phelps)

6. The New York Times’ R&D Lab has built a tool that explores the life stories take in the social space (Apr. 22, Garber)

7. Mirror, mirror: The New York Times wants to serve you info as you’re brushing your teeth (Aug. 31, Garber)

8. NPR tries something new: A day to let managers step away and developers play (Aug. 23, Phelps)

9. Designing a big news site is about more than beauty (July 26, Benton)

10. Decline, plateau, decline: New data on The Daily suggests a social media decline and a tough road ahead (April 5, Benton)

11. Call it the Frank Rich Discount: The Sunday New York Times moves from premium product to loss leader — and the best deal for digital access (March 17, Benton)

12. Tweet late, email early, and don’t forget about Saturday: Using data to develop a social media strategy (March 29, Phelps)

13. How a photographer generated over $100,000 through Facebook (Nov. 22, Simon Owens)

14. Pablo Boczkowski: The gap between what reporters write and readers read threatens news orgs’ future (March 11, Benton)

15. The Newsonomics of The New York Times’ pay fence (March 17, Ken Doctor)

16. Here’s what the New York Times paywall looks like (to Canadians)” (March 17, Benton)

17. Vadim Lavrusik: How journalists can make use of Facebook Pages (May 12, Vadim Lavrusik)

18. Maria Popova: In a new world of informational abundance, content curation is a new kind of authorship (June 10, Maria Popova)

19. MIT management professor Tom Malone on collective intelligence and the “genetic” structure of groups (May 4, Garber)

20. “It just feels inevitable”: Nick Denton on Gawker Media sites’ long-in-the-works new layout (Feb. 7, Garber)

Calendar photo by Zsolt Halasi used under a Creative Commons license.

POSTED Dec. 28, 2011, 11 a.m.

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