Our Top 10 Features of 2014

From Glenda Ritz to grief, Larry Legend to largesse left to an Indiana city, here are this year’s top feature-length or cover-package stories.
Honorable Mention: Flashback Feature: Go Now: Five great Indiana lakes made a splash a year and a half ago, and our readers can’t get enough. [originally July 2013]
10. Flashback Feature: Kate’s Story: The account of a mother’s grief, one year later, in the wake of her daughter’s death at the hands of a driver high on opiates and cocaine. [originally November 2005]
9. Doing Their Homework: Adam Wren turned in the untold story on 2013’s biggest local scandal. Needless to say, Glenda Ritz’s team knows how to orchestrate an old-fashioned political hit. [January]
8. John Green Finally Goes to the Movies!: Julia Spalding caught up with Indy’s favorite literary titan ahead of his Fault in Our Stars tome-turned-film’s theatrical release. [June]
7. Model City: We collected 10 big ideas to make Indianapolis the city of everyone’s dreams. Here’s what we came up with. [August]
6. Best of Indy 2014: These 119 winners and 34 readers’ choice elite round out the Circle City’s premier … well, everything. [December]
5. Selfless Portrait: The enigmatic David Gundlach left his $150 million fortune to Elkhart, Indiana, and Allison Copenbarger Vance was on the case. [July]
4. Larry Bird’s Greatest Shot Was the One He Didn’t Take: Forty years after Larry Legend left Bob Knight’s IU program—embarking on his so-called lost year—Rubino made sense of those early years. [December]
3. The Boy with Half a Brain: Michael Rubino detailed the grim choice to remove a portion of William Buttars’s brain left the Zionsville child and his parents changed for good. [August]
2. Indy’s 25 Best Restaurants: They’re simply the best. Get there already. [May]
1. Dear Kate: Nancy Comiskey’s moving letters to her deceased daughter catalyzed a flood of response from readers the world over, and for good reason. [November]