• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 3, 2011

The launch of Conan O'Brien's "Conan" on TBS may not have soared to the top of Nielsen's ratings charts, but it took the No. 1 position of all news stories published by MediaDailyNews during 2010, according to an analysis of the publication's "most read" stories of the year. In fact, it was a Nov. 19, 2010 story about "Conan's" middling ratings ("'Conan' Ratings Level, But Stays Solid With Rivals") that was the most read story of the year.

Stories about 'Conan" held two of the top 10 "most read" MDN story positions for the year (the other top 10 placer was the Oct. 20, 2010 "Conan Promotes New Show Via Social Media"), three of the top 20, and four of the top 25 most read stories of the year.

The second most read MDN story of the year was the Dec. 14, 2010 story about Thomson Reuters's new Reuters America news wire service making a run at AP's dominance in the U.S. news marketplace ("Thomson Reuters Takes On AP, Debuts News Service").

Stories about the impact digital media is having on traditional media generally dominated the rest of the top 10"most read" stories in MDN during 2010, including:

"Online Ads Surpass TV Ads In Recall, Likability"
"Facebook, Twitter Battle For Billions In TV Ads"
"Amazon Kindle Offers Publishers Lucrative Deal"
"Kellogg Increases 2010 Ad Spend, Triples Social Media"
"ANA: Social Media, Web Spend Up, TV Down"
"Magazine Newsstand Sales Head South"