Having journalists select Top 10 stories of the year is an arbitrary, sometimes capricious exercise easily dismissed as scientifically fraudulent.

Which is one of the reasons Satan invented analytics.

The digital world that threatens to consume us all is fueled and governed by analytics, the generation of data that measures, as Joe Friday might be mumbling from his grave, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

No matter what reader surveys or focus groups or friends sipping suds might tell you, analytics always tell the truth. People who say they want to read only good news are either fibbing or in an embarrassingly small minority, as analytics report exactly what they’re reading online, how long they’re spending on each article, what kind of device they’re using, where they’re physically located, and all sorts of other secrets that somebody sinister is probably compiling in a bunker somewhere. And just the facts: Good news makes a poor target for eyeballs compared to the more sordid stuff.

With that as an end-of-year introduction to this journalistic exercise, we now share with you the 10 articles on cdapress.com that garnered the highest readership in 2019.

1. Suspect in park shooting in critical condition (July 5). The tragic story of Tyler Rambo began just hours before this article was posted. On the night of Fourth of July in City Park, the 18-year-old Spokane resident who grew up in Coeur d’Alene is accused of firing a shot at a suspected gang member, then running and refusing to drop his weapon despite 24 warnings from Coeur d’Alene police. Police fired on Rambo, hitting him 12 times and causing enough damage that his legs had to be amputated. Rambo faces multiple felony charges.

2. Miracle child Shasta Groene to abductor: I want him to hear from me that he’s nothing (June 17, 2018).

The most-read story on cdapress.com in 2018 nearly repeated that distinction in 2019. Here’s how it opens:

Shasta Groene hopes to fulfill a promise she made to serial killer and sex offender Joseph Duncan III — on her terms.

“His last words to me were, ‘Will you promise you’ll come see me in jail?’” she said of the man who beat and killed three members of her family in May 2005. Duncan kidnapped Shasta and her brother Dylan from their Wolf Lodge home and eventually murdered the boy.

Shasta’s Independence Day arrived on July 2, 2005, when the two were spotted at the Denny’s in Coeur d’Alene. Duncan was arrested and Shasta, 8 at the time, was taken to the hospital.

In an interview with The Press, Shasta said she hopes federal prosecutors will allow her to come eye to eye with Duncan, who is on death row at an Indiana prison, as part of a documentary in the works. A book scheduled to be released as early as this fall is also intended to help bring closure to the horror story that gripped the nation. Shasta has not spoken to Duncan since he was arrested.

3. Pedophile hunter arrested on drug charge (May 24). “Hunted and Confronted” creator Jesse Weeks, then 28, was arrested on drug charges in Post Falls. Weeks made national news with his Facebook group in tracking down adults who engage teenagers on dating apps and groom them for sex. He and a team of a dozen members, including “decoys” who pretend to be teenagers, confront would-be sex offenders and turn them over to police along with the evidence they’ve compiled against them. Weeks also works as an interstate truck driver.

4. Cd’A police involved in downtown shooting incident (July 5). This was the breaking news story that was updated during the night of July 4 and morning of July 5, explaining that police had been involved in a shooting at City Park just after the fireworks show and that one man was sent to Kootenai Health “with unspecified injuries.”

5. Rape case nets man 30-day jail sentence (April 12). The opening sentence pretty much explains why online readers flocked to this article:

COEUR d’ALENE — A 20-year-old Spokane man accused of raping a Hayden teenager in a city park bathroom will spend 30 days in jail.

Judging by the plethora of reader comments on the story, most folks thought the sentence was far lighter than the crime dictated. It should be noted that if Ayden M. Harden violates probation, he’ll be facing up to 12 years in prison.

6. Fatal shooting at Hayden bar (Feb. 24). This article, posted just hours after the shooting at 1:40 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 24, does not name the victim but does list Scott M. White as the suspected shooter. The story notes that the victim and White were reportedly involved in an altercation inside the Tipsy Pine Bar in Hayden before the men went outside to the parking lot, where White reportedly shot the victim.

The victim was soon identified as Michael C. “Topher” Clark, a former member of the famous “Kid Cannabis” ring that was made into a 2014 movie. Meanwhile, White pleaded guilty to second-degree murder earlier this month. His sentencing is scheduled for March 13, 2020.

7. CDA Chamber ‘regrets’ local company’s Fourth of July parade entry; owner dismisses concerns his float’s imagery was racist (July 28). Article commenters were passionate on both sides of this argument, vehemently defending or attacking the parade entry by Dixie Services of Post Falls. Two vehicles comprised the entry and featured images including Confederate flags and the caricature of a black child eating watermelon, a 1920s advertisement for a product called a “Picaninny Freeze.”

8. California dreamers filling up North Idaho (Dec. 8). The only surprise with this article is that it didn’t finish higher in the Top 10 — maybe because there was no mention of shootings or deplorable acts. Regardless, the story details statistics showing the popularity of Idaho as the new home for outsiders. Of the nearly 80,000 people who moved to Idaho in 2018, approximately 21,000 were former Californians and almost 3,000 of the newcomers chose North Idaho as their final destination.

9. Idaho a gauntlet for interstate cannabis traffic (Dec. 1). Interstate 90 is a thriving corridor for shipping marijuana — legal in neighboring states to the west of us — to Montana, where pot has been OK’d for medical purposes. In Idaho it remains completely illegal, which helps explain this: Marijuana busts in counties along the I-90 corridor essentially tripled from 216 in 2015 — a year after the first recreational cannabis shops in Washington opened to the public — to 614 in 2018.

10. New tenant will be ‘at home’ in old Kmart building (Feb. 3). Business columnist Nils Rosdahl made a splash by breaking the news that an “at home” store - the company doesn’t capitalize the name - would be moving into the vacant Kmart building at 201 W. Neider Ave. in Coeur d’Alene.

New stores are always big news to Press readers, especially when they involve iconic old buildings. Maybe this time next year, we’ll be saluting another Rosdahl scoop when a new tenant for the old Shopko building is named.