In the last installment of Roundup Exploration, we reviewed the history of the top writer’s position on The Roundup. Showing some of the most significant contributors in the previous 12 or so years to this newspaper. Not many can say they hold this position, and it is a position that will naturally only become harder and harder to accomplish. But there is one title that is much more exclusive than having the most article. That title is the most popular article in The Roundup.

But unlike the top writer, this is more challenging than backtracking other people’s profiles on The Roundup. There is no filter on The Roundup to find the most viewed article on both the writing and display pages. Now, I will need to painterly go through 216 pages of around 4,300 different articles. So, let’s go into the rabbit hole and find the most popular article.

Video

Before we begin there, I want to give you guys the most popular video on The Roundup. Finding the most popular video on The Roundup is relatively easy due to YouTube showing the view count. With 129,203 views, the 29-second video titled Luka Dončić Visits Jesuit Dallas is the most popular video on The Roundup. According to an article written by Media Editor Silas Hartman 20,’ Luka was there to play soccer with some of his friends and decided to go to Jesuit to play soccer.

[dd-parallax img=”https://jesuitroundup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-04-16-at-9.49.45-PM.jpg” height=”500″ speed=”2″ z-index=”2″ position=”center” offset=”true” text-pos=”bottom”]Still image from the Luka Doncic Visits Jesuit Dallas video[/dd-parallax]

Now it is not told who shot the original video. Now there is a second video that was shot by Kyle Heckel ’21. But it was shot on an iPhone, while the original video is shot on a 16:9 aspect ratio. Now two different people are responsible for this video. One is Silas Hartman himself, he has a long history of video production with The Roundup, so it would be easy to say he would be there. But what does not make me believe he shot the video is the way he writes his article does not sound like he was there. Now the second person is Gabe Tan 21′, who took the photo in the feature image. Now he probably took the photo since he was there and had equipment for taking the video.

Let the Journey Begin

With over 4,300 articles published on The Roundup website, the question is, where do I begin? I could go through 4,300 articles to search for the most viewed articles, but just going through all those articles would lead to mistakes and possibly missing some articles. So I decided to go through the different sections in The Roundup, which would be a more manageable task than skimming through all the articles at once. So which section should I go to first? I decided to start with the sports section since sports is a big part of Jesuit and would surely have some popular articles.

Sports Articles

I decided to start with the big sports in the sports section: basketball and football. But after looking through these sections, I came up empty, with a few articles breaking 1000 views, but none enough to be the most viewed article. So I decided to look through the less popular sports at Jesuit. But for many, it was the same story, a few articles breaking 1000 views but nothing of notability.

[dd-parallax img=”https://jesuitroundup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-04-16-at-9.46.01-PM.jpg” height=”500″ speed=”2″ z-index=”2″ position=”center” offset=”true” text-pos=”bottom”]Feature image from the Jesuit Crew Races Into Fall Season article “[/dd-parallax]

Then, I visited the crew section, where I found an article published in 2018 titled Jesuit Crew Races Into Fall Season with 43,289 views. The author of this article is Collin Landry, a graduate of the class of 2020. This article would be Collin’s first and most popular of the following five articles he would write for The Roundup. Collin Landry would attend the University of Southern California (USC) and is listed as an Incoming Summer Analyst for Goldman Sachs in his LinkedIn.

Ignatian Days Article

While Collin’s article was a solid start to this search, I know more popular articles were out there. Now I was not entering this search without prior knowledge of the most popular article. More than a year ago, The Roundup did have a feature on their website where you could sort articles by most popular. While this feature for The Roundup is no more, I remember that the top article in the News section had something to do with religion. So I decided to look through the religion section of The Roundup, and sure, I found another.

With 237,385 views, Ignatian Days: A Semester in Reflection is the most popular article on The Roundup. The author of this article is Ashik Amar, a member of the class of 2019. Ignatian Days: A Semester in Reflection would be Ashik Amar’s first article, writing it as a sophomore in 2017. Ashik Amar would write three articles, all of which would never get to the same level of viewership as his first article. This article within the religion section would only match the level of attention Ashik Amar got. Ashik Amar is a Carroll School of Management senior at Boston College, who will graduate summer 2023. He is pursuing concentrations in Finance and Information Systems, with a minor in Sociology.

[dd-parallax img=”https://jesuitroundup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-04-16-at-9.48.05-PM.jpg” height=”500″ speed=”2″ z-index=”2″ position=”center” offset=”true” text-pos=”bottom”]Feature image from the Ignatian Days: A Semester in Reflection article [/dd-parallax]

Maxwell Schutze

Now, after finding Ashik Amar I thought my journey was made. That article I remember being the most popular, and there could be no other article that could beat it. But yet, to my knowledge, there was still one to be found. To be 100% sure that I got the right one, I looked into the other calories I did not check to make sure. Some articles had many views, but none rivaled Ashik Amar’s article, which was until I went into Viewpoint. With a whopping 283,306 published on 2018/11/29 at 8:14 pm, an article titled Five Cartoons and Why They Are the Best Shows You Don’t Watch Anymore would take the title. The writer of this article is a man named Maxwell Schutze, a member of the class of 2019. 

If there was a formula for how to make a popular article on The Roundup, it is safe to say that Maxwell Schutze has found it. Schutze would write three articles during his time with The Roundup. His average viewership is a tedious 164,615.666 viewers pre-post. Most people will only get a few views in there career at The Roundup. His article views are as follows:

2017 – Do You Play a True Sport? – 114394 views

2018 – Five Cartoons and Why They Are the Best Shows You Don’t Watch Anymore – 283306 views

2019 – Is Experience Overrated? – 96170 views (also got an Editor’s Pick) 

Maxwell Schutze has the most views from any author, and it’s not even close. If there was an MVP for most popular articles, it would be taken by Maxwell Schutze, a title that may never be taken. Maxwell Schutze attends Creighton University and writes for their local school newspaper The Creightonian.  Check out his work here.

[dd-parallax img=”https://jesuitroundup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-04-16-at-9.48.52-PM.jpg” height=”500″ speed=”2″ z-index=”2″ position=”center” offset=”true” text-pos=”bottom”]Feature image from the Five Cartoons and Why They Are the Best Shows You Don’t Watch Anymore article[/dd-parallax]

The Stats

For those who might be wondering about what are the most popular articles for which big section, well here it is:

Conclusion

Popularity is a strange thing. Often, the most popular items on this list were the ones we would never think would be popular. Most of the time, I could not see why so many people would read this article other than they just found it interesting from the other. Popularity is a hard thing to gain within our world, something that works and determines can never attain. Sometimes comes randomly to those who do not deserve it, with no explanation. And in many, this is why The Roundup acts as merely a miniature ecosystem of this idea of popularity.