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Friday, Dec 31, 2010 7:01 PM UTC

10 from 2010: Our favorite Salon stories

One final look back at our own work, and what we liked best

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Topics: Best of 2010, Inside Salon

10 from 2010: Our favorite Salon stories

Don’t worry — the tsunami of Best Of lists is almost over. I think we’re all looking forward to the fresh mystery of the new year. And right now, our necks ache from looking back so much; we’re particularly sick of the forced remembering of Christine O’Donnell and the Trololo guy. To the annals of footnoted history, we banish ye!

But we did want to highlight the pieces in Salon that — through an unscientific staff poll — we decided we liked the best this year. None of these should be a huge surprise to Salon readers; they were all big hits with you, too. From Glenn Greenwald’s incisive exploration of WikiLeaks, to Mary Elizabeth Williams’ gripping accounts of her cancer diagnosis and treatment, our favorite stories this year run a familiar Salon gamut of world-changing importance to the expressly, meaningfully personal.

And with no more fanfare than that, in chronological order, our 10 staff favorites:

  1. Hipsters on Food Stamps

    They’re young, they’re broke, and they pay for organic salmon with government subsidies. Got a problem with that?

    By Jennifer Bleyer

  2. The Tina Fey Backlash

    The “30 Rock” star’s pathetic single girl shtick is getting criticism from an unlikely source: Women who love her

    By Rebecca Traister

  3. The Civil Rights Heroism of Charles Sherrod

    Andrew Breitbart sure picked the wrong people to symbolize black “racism.” Taylor Branch and Clay Carson weigh in

    By Joan Walsh

  4. The Strange and Consequential Case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks

    By Glenn Greenwald

  5. My Cancer Diagnosis

    Until last week, it was the best summer of my life. Then my doctor gave me the news I dreaded

    By Mary Elizabeth Williams

  6. How the “Ground Zero Mosque” Fear Mongering Began

    A viciously anti-Muslim blogger, the New York Post and the right-wing media machine: How it all went down

    By Justin Elliott

  7. My Relentless Pursuit of the Guy Who Robbed Me

    A thief broke into my car. I used Craigslist, a dating site, MySpace and a fast food joint to track him down

    By Amanda Enayati

  8. “Sopranos” Family Tree: Edith Bunker to Don Draper

    We chart the ancestors of the groundbreaking show — and how it continues to shape American TV

    By Matt Zoller Seitz

  9. Better Yet, DON’T Write That Novel

    Why National Novel Writing Month is a waste of time and energy

    By Laura Miller

  10. The War Room Hack Thirty

    By Alex Pareene

And 10 more honorable mentions: David Rakoff’s wonderfully moving “Made” essay on his distinct craft; Andrew O’Hehir’s vivid takedowns of “Secretariat” and “Sex and the City 2″; mighty intern Emma Mustich’s gotcha on Sarah Palin’s desecration of the flag; our inside scoop on the biggest Oscar story of the year; Tracy Clark-Flory’s wonderful, moving piece about her mother and Christmas; Glenn Greenwald’s searing look at how Americans have been trained to think about Afghanistan; Francis Lam’s first time killing a chicken and his illuminating history lesson on General Tso’s chicken; and on Open Salon, Nelle Engoron’s intensely thought-out coverage of “Mad Men.”

Now, on to 2011!

Kerry Lauerman

Kerry Lauerman is Salon's Editor in Chief. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. More Kerry Lauerman.

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The week in 10 pics

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  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

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