As someone going on to study political science, I’ve always liked numbers. Not in the mathematical sense, that’s a different story, but the kind that say something about the world: polling percentages, voting trends, approval ratings. Give me a good statistic and I’m happy. So, when I started thinking about how to capture what this newspaper has meant both to me and to the WHS community as my time as editor comes to a close, it felt natural to begin the only way I knew how: by trying to put it into numbers.
(Note: these stats span from May 2025 to April 2026 to reflect the change in UP’s leadership)
UP statistics
Total views: 12,700
Total visitors: 6745
Editions published: 27
Articles published: 144
The 10 most read articles of the 2025-26 academic year!
- Which Department Would Survive in the Hunger Games by Valentina Corte – 232 views
- Off-timetable Day 2025 in Memes by Cecilia Simmons – 207 views
- Sports Day Awards Nobody Asked For by Cecilia Simmons – 205 views
- End of Year Cartoon by Erica Polley – 194 views
- I Can’t Interfere, It’s a Canon Event: A Definitive Ranking of Shared Wimbledon High Experiences by Anna Agnarsson – 140 views
- Halloween Cartoon by Erica Polley – 135 views
- Choose Your Seat Wisely: The Most Comfortable Seats of WHS by Lila Henderson – 126 views
- Surviving January- Different Types of Students’ Coping Mechanisms by Jemima Bennett – 121 views
- Time Out WHS: An Indisputable Ranking and Guide to Wimbledon’s 12 Charity Shops by Dillan Quinn – 119 views
- My Ultimate Autumn Watchlist by Ava Skeete – 106 views
The 3 Most Published Authors!
- Kiana Oliver – 25 articles
- Saskia Pepper – 24 articles
- Rochelle Oliver – 20 articles
However, as great as numbers seem at quantifying impact, they are nowhere near as great at explaining it. There are moments these figures simply can’t capture, like when an article changes someone’s perspective, makes someone feel seen, sparks laughter, or starts a conversation between classmates and friends.
That is the real significance of student journalism: a labour of love, not driven by output and volume, but by the personal voice and truth of its contributors and the impact it has on our community.
Editors will change, and so will these numbers, but the passion behind each article and the emotions evoked when reading them never will.
So, whilst some things can be counted, the reason we keep doing this isn’t one of them.
