November 27, 2012 – Marina City Online has now published 1,000 original news stories. Fittingly, the 999th story was actually about Marina City.

Since October 30, 2007, MCO has expanded north into the River North neighborhood of downtown Chicago and south into the Loop.

The first published news story was about Marina City Online, how the website had hired an attorney to defend against a claim by Marina Towers Condominium Association that it had a “common law copyright” on the association’s “name and image,” upon which MCO’s website about Marina City was allegedly infringing. Although never fully explained by the condo association, the claim was eventually dropped after being widely ridiculed.

MCO did not start counting the number of times each news story was selected until 2009 but the total number for that year was only 21,899. In 2010, the number increased to 38,530. In 2011, MCO news stories were read 70,663 times and so far this year, stories have been selected more than 110,000 times.

The most popular story was about a photo (above) from the Chicago Air & Water Show, published on August 18, 2012, of U.S. Navy Blue Angels flying over John Hancock Center. The most popular stories have covered filming in September along the Chicago River for a new “Bollywood” action movie, investigation of a fall from Marina Towers in June, a condo at Marina City that was home to 27 cats, a bowler fined by the PBA for an incident at Marina City’s 10pin Bowling Lounge, and a new hair salon opening at Trump International Hotel & Tower.

Collectively, the number of words total 322,417, more than three times the length of the average novel. The longest was a 2009 story about legendary Marina City restaurateur Johnny Lattner that needed 3,090 words to be told. The shortest was a story in 2008 that was little more than a 13-word caption of a photo of a large flag on display at Hotel Sax.