iBerkshires' Top 10 Most-Viewed Stories for 2024
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Thousands of articles have been posted on iBerkshires over the last year and some drew more eyeballs than others.
Normally our top 10 stories range across the year but the flood of breaking news in the last few weeks has pushed some of the most recent articles to the top.
Our top story is the scamming of a North Adams man to the tune of $420,000. Posted in October, it has been viewed more than 115,000 times.
Based on a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the article described how the older man was tricked into handing over wads of cash to a fake Treasury agent for "safekeeping."
One of the couriers, Urvishkumar Patel, 21, of South Boston, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The fake T-man is still at large and the money is gone.
The lesson: if someone posing as a government or company official calls, tells you you're in trouble and asks for cash or gift cards to fix it, hang up.
Our No. 2 story also involves government agents (real ones), a salon and the vice president — and it got more views than the presidential candidate's sold-out fundraising visit which didn't even crack the top 10.
Alicia Powers, owner of Four One Three Salon, located behind the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, was taking advantage of the high security around Kamala Harris' fundraising visit on July 27 to close up shop and leave town for a couple days.
She was shocked to find that her locked business had been entered and the bathroom used during this time by public safety personnel.
After searching for answers, Powers said she received a call from a Secret Service representative in Boston who took responsibility for the incident even though he could not confirm that his agents were involved.
Our next story was tragic and occurred in November when Michael DeMarsico, 63, was struck and killed crossing four-lane Howland Avenue. DeMarsico was a Drury High School graduate and worked at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
He was crossing the road with other family members to attend a sports banquet at the Bounti-Fare, where he was to present a memorial award in honor of his son, Army Spec. Michael R. DeMarsico II, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. The younger DeMarsico was only 20 years old.
An article about a shooting on Cole Avenue on Sunday morning garnered enough views in 24 hours to push it No. 4. The incident caused the Williams College campus to go into lockdown.
As of latest reports, the suspect(s) have not been apprehended but the victim, taken to Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, was expected to survive.
This is the first shooting in Williamstown in at least 60 years, outside of a 2007 hunting accident from which the victim survived.
No. 5 was one of a series of articles over the last two years about fire chief woes in Dalton. Chief Christian Tobin, who had been sworn in with great ceremony in January was suspended later in the summer. This story from September was about the extension of his administrative leave. The Fire District currently has an interim chief.
Another recent story came in at No. 6 views but we predict this Dec. 11 post will eventually move higher as it involved a Pittsfield High School dean being arrested on drug trafficking charges.
Lavante Wiggins and another man were arrested and arraigned in U.S. District Court in Springfield; Wiggins was also to be arraigned on Dec. 23 in Central Berkshire District Court.
Wiggins had worked for PHS for three years and was immediately put on administrative leave. His arrest was followed by two more administrators being placed on administrative leave on unrelated investigations by the Department of Children and Families; another former PHS staffer is also under investigation by DCF. These leaves prompted comments at the School Committee meeting last week, which is our 14th most read story.
The investigations have sparked calls for an independent probe and the City Council plans to weigh in on the matter. This is likely to generate more articles before the year ends next week.
Articles 7 and 8 both had close to the same number of views. The first was about the crash of a pickup truck on South Street in Pittsfield that injured three men; the second was the search for a missing person from Hanson believed to have been in Williamstown. Her car was found near a hiking area and her remains a month later in New York State.
No. 9 was about the second sale of North Adams' Steeple City Plaza in less than a year but readers may have been more interested in its coverage of the abrupt closure of V&V Liquors.
First Hartford Realty of Connecticut bought the downtown shopping center in 2005 and opened V&V in 2014 after Staples had moved out of that space. It continued to run the liquor store after the first sale but closed it with the second. The license was picked up a few months later and the store reopened under new management.
And it wouldn't be a New England top 10 without at least one weather story. A February Nor'easter set to dump more than a foot of snow over the region took a southward turn that left no more than a couple of inches.
Honorable mentions include the approval of a Starbucks at the corner of Union and Eagle streets in North Adams and the emergency demolition of the collapsing Moderne Studio building in North Adams, both from earlier this year, and the recent wildfire in Great Barrington.
iBerkshires used a cumulative count of daily views from when an article was posted.
Tags: top 10, year in review,
