2015: The most engaging stories

SOS Chennai

The final month in 2015 was truly traumatic for Tamil Nadu. The unprecedented rains and the flooding that followed on 1st, 2nd and the 3rd of December will forever be the stuff of nightmares for many people who lived through it. In collaboration with Twitter India and the volunteers behind chennairains.org, The Hindu curated tweets and posts of those asking for help - and those giving it. The website had a live page running, giving out updates about rescues, public transportation, traffic information, flooding levels in different areas and the water levels in the lakes and the rivers as and when the water was let out. Here are the two live pages that The Hindu ran on the days of the heaviest flooding.

Day 1 Day 2 December

Battleground Bihar

The biggie. The battle we had all been waiting for. The conclusion of the most eagerly anticipated event - not least because Prime Minister Narendra Modi found a lot of free time to hop into and out of election rallies. The fact that two of the most public rivals in the State came together to make sure BJP didn’t get even a toehold in Bihar might have also had something to do with it.

Ticketing hits

June had been a good month with regards to the visitors to our website for many reasons, but none so interesting (and mildly chuckle-inducing) as a story about tatkal ticket booking timings that would henceforth change from June 15. The story hit the top of our analytics chart when it came out. And again and again on random days whenever the travelling mood struck our ticket-booking public.

The Actors' Poll

If local city council elections could do so well (#7 on this list), could those involving celebrities be far behind? This story was one that took web team by surprise, but it shouldn’t have really. Rivalry that had been building for a long while, dramatic statements and wild accusations by each side, and heavy drama on the day of the Nadigar Sangam elections proved that star power is always in fashion.

Jaitley's fiscal moment

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s first full-fledged budget since BJP came to power in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Hindu ran a live page, giving out minute by minute updates on the different announcements that Mr. Jaitley tabled in the parliament.There were a lot of expectations - some came to fruition, some turned out to be damp squibs. But the best part? The number of people visiting the site. (#humblebrag) Catch up on the Union Budget 2015.

A Budget breakdown

If trawling through time stamps is not your thing, here is a handy breakdown of the highlights of the Union Budget - which also did well on the site.

The BJP's Bengaluru hook

The Bharatiya Janata party was constantly grabbing eyeballs in 2015 for a plethora of reasons. But none were as surprising as the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) election results that turned out be extremely popular with the readers. We had live updates, voting trends, a twitter blitzkrieg and what not. And it paid off - the story consistently did well throughout the day. Take a look at how the BJP came back to power in Bengaluru’s city council.

After the deluge

Once the flood waters receded in Chennai and we started taking stock of the situation, various stories emerged on the reasons behind such heavy rainfall and the flooding. But none resonated so much as this story about the El Niño phenomenon and the havoc it wreaked, not only in Tamil Nadu, but across the world.

Review this

Actor Vikram’s movie I was hotly anticipated purely for the reason that he had worked on the film for roughly two years, undergoing dramatic physical changes for his role. That, combined with the fact that his last outing with director Shankar (Anniyan) turned out to be a massive hit, pushed up the hype. 2015 began with a bang for The Hindu, courtesy Baradwaj Rangan’s review.