It seems even the readers of The Commercial Record – who are, without a doubt, the most well-educated, respectable and humanitarian readers any news publication can claim – are a bloodthirsty bunch.

Betrayed by big data (in this case, Google analytics); each week, the most-viewed stories fall into three major categories: breaking news, crime and punishment. Thanks for that first one, by the way; it’s good to know our readers are still interested in the primary function of journalism.

Whenever The Commercial Record’s staff writes about a crime committed – Ponzi schemes, embezzlement, bank robberies, even mail fraud – the hit count climbs. Closely behind those articles are the stories of the punishments – fines paid, licenses lost, restitutions made, jail sentences assigned.

And so it goes; such is human nature, after all. It’s comforting to sit at one’s desk on a Monday morning and read about the tragedies that befall others – with sympathy for the victims, of course, accompanied by overtones of “thank God it wasn’t me, my family, my friends.” And it’s satisfying to read that another criminal has been caught and punished for their sins, both against the victims and against the industry as a whole.

But with a little perspective, the view changes. Day by day and week by week, crime and punishment are the top stories; our readers are only human. But over the course of the entire year, a different picture emerges.

Rising like cream, though, are the people stories. Arrivals and departures, particularly in the banking c-suite, are some of the most popular. The In Person features, launched this year, consistently cause a spike in traffic when they go live. The profiles of our Women of FIRE and Community Bank Heroes, the People page on the old website – they’re all up there in the rankings.

While it could be argued that Google’s analysis of reader habits is not the strongest correlation to the behavior of humanity as a whole, there’s a lesson to be learned nonetheless. In the most stressful moments of the day, when the emails come pouring in, the projects are late, the phones keep ringing and you’re pretty sure you forgot to start the dishwasher before leaving the house, a little schadenfreude is forgivable and perhaps even healthy. Better to read about someone else’s misdeeds than to commit your own, after all.

But at the end of the year, when the projects have been completed, the emails answered and the dishes are clean, just remember – it’s all about the people. It’s not flashy, but it is important; struggles and triumphs, successes and recognitions deserve to be read, shared and celebrated. And the readers of The Commercial Record know it.