Our Biggest 5 Stories of 2015 And How We Annotated Them


One of the first, and most popular stories we tackled as a community on News Genius was the news that the embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) had left his country for the first time in four years— to visit Moscow.Later, Turkey would shoot down a Russian jet which it claims violated Turkish airspace. The incident brought the proxy East-West conflict that was being fought in Syria into sharp relief.

News Genius brought a lot to the table here: the reportage of these stories often misses the context and between-the-lines details necessary to really get a handle on what's going on. Check out Kentrell Curry on U.S. relations with Syria and yakubsllc on Russia's long-term strategy.The Very Memeable Crimes of Martin ShkreliMartin Shkreli burst onto the internet scene in September 2015: he was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, a company which had just announced it would be raising the price of daraprim, a potentially life-saving drug whose patent it had acquired, by 4000%. He seemed to double down on this notoriety, acquiring a one-of-a-kind Wu Tang album for $2m, boasting of his plans to bail Bobby Shmurda out of jail, claiming to be "the most successful Albanian to ever walk the face of this Earth and hosting bizarre live streams from his office.

He'd been a fairly important figure in the real-world, real-money scene for a while, though: after lurching from hedge funds to biotech companies, he’s now been charged with illegally taking stock from a  firm he started, Retrophin Inc., and using it to pay unrelated debts. As he was led away in his Zuckerberg-esque hoody, Shkreli's arrogance, exploitation of the apparatus of late capitalism and obvious desperation for any attention felt like a true dragon of the internet was retreating back into his cave.We looked in-depth at his controversial acquisition of the Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and the cultural implications it had, as well as at his arrest just a few weeks later. Read annotations by Fuzzytek on the details of the charges, Brian Duricy on Bernie Sanders's rejection of Shkreli and Zachary Mahabir on how much Wu $2m gets you.Feeling the Bern on the Democratic NominationAlthough it features a smaller cast than the Republican battle, the Democratic race has still featured plenty of talking points. Hillary Clinton became a verified Genius user, annotating her campaign kickoff speech as well as her historic address to the UN's fourth conference on women.

Bernie Sanders captured the popular imagination, receiving an endorsement from Killer Mike. We annotated Mike's speech introducing Sanders to his hometown of Atlanta, as well as Sanders' speech at Liberty University. We also kept track of the Democratic debates with the Washington Post.Check out Edward Ongweso Jr on the candidates' response to ISIS and the desperate need for surveillance reform, Chihuahua0 on Sanders' notion of a "rigged economy", eitheror on Killer Mike's credentials, and Brian Duricy on which candidate has the most credible endorsements.The Big, Big GOP RaceSay what you want about the GOP's selection process for a presidential candidate in 2016: it definitely had boots on the ground. We've seen five debates, each with a cast of (not counting the moderators, who were stars in their own right... sort of), an avalanche of press, a lot of racism and paranoia, and a sudden swerve in priorities after the Paris attacks.

Since the first debate on August 6th, we've been annotating the debates, and other important documents and speeches, alongside our partners at the Washington Post and Fusion. You can read the Post's coverage of the latest GOP debate here; go here for the Fusion version.

There's also a range of speeches and primary documents that have been annotated using the Genius platform: have a peek at the mother of all Donald Trump interviews annotated by Chris Cillizza and Peter Sagal, and the memo telling Senate Republicans what to do if Trump is their nominee.

There is still much to be said about who'll be running next year: we'll be there to say it. In the meantime, check out some of our best annotations: Professor_Parabola on Jeb Bush's dubious appeal, Dan Keegan on the deification of veterans, Williamnelligan on the moderator selection and darkdoomhoney on the minimum wage.The Paris AttacksThe terrorists attacks in Paris on November 13th were shocking and created a number of knee-jerk reactions as well as global repercussions (re-orientating the race for the U.S. presidency around security was just one of them). As a community, we tried to bring insight and understanding to the context of the attacks, revisiting Graeme Wood's essay "What ISIS Wants" as well as Wood's own annotations on an article written in response.

We also covered the way the attacks were apparently disproportionately covered in the media via a thoughtful article in The Conversation.

Have a read of Stereochrome on the origins of ISIS, BennySwoons on distinguishing ISIS from al Qaeda, GOMEMY on the name "Daesh", yakubsllc on the continuing importance of Edward Said's project and Kentrell Curry on the power of metrics in media.