Cultural Weekly's Top 10 Stories of 2013

Cultural Weekly readers march to their own drummer, but sometimes they march together.
Where did you march this year? We did a little research, tallied the numbers, and came up with Cultural Weekly’s Top 10 stories of 2013.

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photo by Sal Rodriguez

When the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, we ran a special edition that focused on the creative spirit of the Motor City. Three of thee articles landed in our Top 10: W. Kim Heron’s battle cry, Detroit: From Economic Turmoil Comes a New Cultural Trajectory; Why Does Detroit Matter?, special features editor Tod Hardin’s compilation of views from 36 of Detroit’s brightest luminaries; and to round it out, 25 Things We Love About Detroit.
Chalk poem detail, photo by eliot k, used with permission under Creative Commons license.
Chalk poem detail, photo by eliot k, used with permission under Creative Commons license.

Poetry has a loyal following at Cultural Weekly. The ten winners of our first poetry contest garnered many readers; we published their work in two articles–Poetry Contest Winners Part 1 and Part 2. In addition, Cynthia Atkins, whose three poems we published under the collective title Sight & Signs, was the most widely read of all individual poets.
There is always great interest in independent film in our virtual pages. Adam Leipzig’s promise of a better tomorrow in Welcome to the Golden Age of Cinema was widely popular.
Television commercials, on the other hand, are wildly unpopular. Perhaps that’s why so many of you read McSex Sells When McDonald’s Unwraps, our shot-by-shot take-down of a McDonald’s commercial comparing it to visual tropes in the porn industry. Or perhaps it’s because we used the word “sex” in the title. What do you think?
Courtesy Poster Boy / Flickr
Courtesy Poster Boy / Flickr

You don’t have to answer that question. The NSA already knows. Edward Snowden and the Politics of Privacy analyzed the effect of government dragnet snooping on the creative process. “Our right to personal secrecy—you can also call it privacy—is fundamental to our ability to innovate,” this article declared.
My Dog Sighs specializes in making art out of discarded products
My Dog Sighs specializes in making art out of discarded products

Rounding out our Top 10, we’re thrilled to see one of our newest features already attracting a huge following. “Culture: So What??” is a weekly series where culture-makers and culture-observers answer this seemingly simple question. Internationally acclaimed street artist My Dog Sighs quickly climbed up our readership charts. “Culture is my interaction with the world,” he said. That’s a drum-beat we can all march to.
 

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