6 Most Popular Articles in 6 Years of LFL

Six years ago today, Lowell’s First Look officially launched. While we started posting articles online under the name “Lowell Leads the Way” in August 2016, we took the leap a few months later to form an official business and change our name to Lowell’s First Look.

In introducing the business, we said our goal was to publish “2-3 good stories” a week. We’ve met and exceeded that goal by a long shot, and in October 2022, we posted more than 15 times a week on average. In addition to our own reporting, we have cultivated a collection of guest columnists that cover a range of topics, and we’ve become a trusted source for businesses and people to share information via press releases and letters to the editor.

During the four months we published articles in 2016, our website was viewed 15,385 times. Today, we are two weeks into November, and we’ve had about the same number of views in those two weeks as we did in all of 2016.

To commemorate the occasion, we thought it might be fun to look back on the top six articles, in terms of website views, from the last six years.

But first, a word from our sponsors…

How You Can Help Keep LFL a Part of the Community

It is possible that someone out there is getting rich off web traffic, but we don’t know who they are. Within the news industry, there has been a movement toward putting articles behind paywalls or saving the most interesting stories for paying subscribers. This doesn’t surprise us. After all, it’s tough to make a living when you give away your product for free.

Still, we feel very strongly that Lowell needs an easily accessible – and free – source of trusted local news. We have no plans to put up paywalls on Lowell’s First Look, but it would also be nice to be compensated for our work here.

If you appreciate what we do, you can help us in three ways:

1. Support our current advertisers.

Our local advertisers keep the lights on, so to speak. This is our main source of revenue, and the money we earn from local advertisers pays for web hosting, our domain and all the tech services we use to keep the site running. Our current advertisers are:

• Arctic Heating and Cooling
• Rick Seese, Greenridge Realty
• LowellArts
• Amanda Rogers, Rogers Neighborhood Realty
• FROM
• Lowell’s Open Table
• Alpha Care Center
• Canfield Plumbing & Heating
• Reagan Family Dentistry
• Ability Weavers
• Litehouse Family YMCA, Lowell

Please patronize their businesses and organizations and let them know you heard about them through Lowell’s First Look.

2. Advertise with us!

If you have a business, please consider advertising with us.

While we love the idea of small businesses supporting one another, we don’t want you to feel like you should advertise out of a sense of obligation or charity. Instead, please advertise with us because of the great value we offer. For the about the same amount you’ll pay for one week of advertising in some other publications, you get a month of advertising with us plus a social media mention, if you like.

For more on our pricing and options, visit our advertising page.

3. Send us a “coffee.”

We have an account with Ko-fi (pronounced “coffee”) which is essentially a virtual tip jar. If you have sent a little money our way this year already, THANK YOU! If you haven’t, please consider making a monetary tip.

Perhaps the best part of getting Ko-fi payments is the morale boost they provide. After spending hours sitting in City Hall to cover meetings or rearranging our families’ schedules for what is essentially unpaid work, it means a lot when that Ko-fi notification comes through to let us know our efforts are appreciated.

You can visit Ko-fi at this link.

And with all that out of the way, here are the most-read articles in the history of LFL. See if you can identify a theme.

6. Burger King is Coming Back to Lowell

In 2012, Lowell lost its Burger King. But in 2018, news was that the King would be returning to town. A new franchise owner selected a site at the corner of Main Street and Valley Vista, and this was apparently welcome news for readers as this article lands in the No. 6 spot among the all-time most popular articles on Lowell’s First Look. Burger King is still with us although, as seems to be the case with many businesses nowadays, staffing seems to be an issue as of late.

5. Green Acres Employee Tests Positive for COVID-19

COVID-19 turned the world upside down in 2020, and it hit close to home when an employee of Lowell’s Green Acres retirement community tested positive for the disease. Although possibly not the first case in Lowell, it was the first one to be publicly acknowledged. While we published a number of articles related to coronavirus, this is the only one to make the top six list.

4. Mexican Restaurant Planned for Historic Downtown

In February 2020, we told you about a Mexican restaurant proposed for a historic building on the Main Street bridge. With a tentative name of Rio Plano Taqueria, owners envisioned it as a place where people could pick up authentic street tacos to-go or for dining on a patio overlooking the Flat River. Then COVID-19 hit, and everything ground to a halt. However, plans for Rio Plano Taqueria are still underway, and if you’ve driven by the building lately, you’ll see the patio and new façade have been taking shape.

3. New Culver’s Restaurant Breaks Ground

Are you sensing a theme here? Yes, Lowell residents are really into food. And Culver’s may have been one of the most hotly anticipated restaurant openings in recent years. This story from 2021 was the third most-read story in the history of Lowell’s First Look. The restaurant opened earlier this year and is now serving up its famous ButterBurgers and other fare to a steady stream of customers visiting its location at the corner of Main and Church Streets.

2. Surprising Sight in Flat River Causes Concern

Our 2018 April Fool’s Day article remains our favorite – and apparently yours too. For 2017, we published a fake article for April Fool’s Day about the biodigester reopening. It was apparently too soon for some residents and may have ruffled a few feathers from folks who saw the headline and thought the article was real. For 2018, we decided to keep things light, and that seemed to be a better approach. While it is second overall in terms of its all-time views, this article takes the crown for the story with the most views in a single day.

1. Scenes from Lowell: What’s Going Where Edition

And taking the top spot is a 2021 edition of Scenes from Lowell. This article actually came about from the suggestion of a reader who wanted to know what was being built at various construction sites around town. We had no idea that it would be so popular. It seems like whenever someone asked in a group what was being built in a specific location, someone would invariably share a link to this article and set off a new round of views. Of course, many of those construction sites were for restaurants, and we can’t help but think that’s part of what was driving traffic to the story.