Last week I had to write a story about a man allegedly raping a young teenage girl. It was our most popular story on the website all weekend long.

I also had to write about a 24-year-old being murdered, a 32-year-old dying and being dismembered and a 5-year-old boy being mauled to death by a dog.

If you even for a second think that I wasn't upset by the time I left the office Friday evening, you're dead wrong.

But that's not the point of this post. I touched on the fact that journalists aren't heartless in my previous post.

This is about the negative stories.

We all hear all the time, "All the news is sad and depressing. No one writes good news stories." They go on, and on, and on.

Guess what? We do write good stories! We write stories about kids planting trees for their schools and council recognizing good citizens or employees. Want to know how many readers we get on those stories? Not nearly as many as we do with crime stories.

If we miss or are a few hours late on a crime story, our readers are upset. If we're missing a city in the police blotter section, we hear about it.

You don't have to be ashamed of being entranced by the crime stories. People are interested and want to know. It doesn't make you morbid or a bad person. Lying to say that you don't want to hear about it does makes you dishonest though.

Here's a look at our most popular stories as of 2 p.m. today. Rape, theft, toys, murdered children, car accident and another thief. 

I get so sick of being blamed for bad things happening. It's not my fault people commit crimes. When I hear about it, I research, fact-check, interview and write. That's it.

We weren't the ones clicking and reading these stories.


"The worst crime is faking it." - Kurt Cobain