With an impeachment inquiry, the start of the 2020 election, and the raiding of Area 51, keeping up with the daily fire hose of news was as disorienting as ever over the past year. It’s little wonder then that New York readers gravitated toward immersive stories that took them inside the worlds of Instagram celebrities, male fragility, and high-society preschools. Of course, the news can’t be avoided entirely and the most popular stories of 2019 from Intelligencer, the Cut, Vulture, Grub Street, and the Strategist — as measured by total collective minutes of audience engagement — include several on the monsters that dominated headlines over the past 12 months.
These stories are just a small sample of the kind of work New York is doing every day, both in print, where 12 of these stories were published, and across our five digital sites. If you haven’t done so already, now would be a good time to sign up for One Great Story, our daily recommendation newsletter — as well as, of course, to subscribe.
20. Living With Money
19. Destroying a Beach
18. A New Rape Accusation Against Donald Trump
By Sarah Jones
17. Ranking the New Establishment
By The Editors
16. The Rise and Fall of Babe.Net
15. Ivanka Aeternum
14. An Ask Polly for the Ages
13. Lucy Flores Accuses Joe Biden of Unwanted Touching
By Lucy Flores
12. An Assault in the Mount Sinai Emergency Room
By Lisa Miller
11. A Government Shutdown Post-Mortem
10. Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling?
By The Editors
9. In Conversation: Anjelica Huston
8. A Case of Precocious Puberty
By Patrick Burleigh
7. The Battle of Grace Church
6. Igor Zinoviev on His Old Boss
By M.L. Nestel
5. The Incels Getting Extreme Plastic Surgery to Become ‘Chads’
By Alice Hines
4. Larry’s Spell
By Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh
3. The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge
By Kera Bolonik
2. Hideous Men
By E. Jean Carroll
1. I Was Caroline Calloway
By Natalie Beach
