These are the Lens’ most loved posts of 2025, judged by how many people clicked and read them. They span the entire year, starting in January 2025, when the governor created a homeless shelter on the Industrial Canal just before the Super Bowl. A few weeks later, photographer Pableaux Johnson collapsed from a fatal heart attack at a Sunday secondline.
In March, we wrote a deeply personal profile about Jessie Hoffman, a star quarterback from John F. Kennedy High School, whose horrific crime never matched with the person his classmates knew. Hoffman was executed by the state of Louisiana in March.
We also wrote about the concessions made for the state’s planned gargantuan Data Center and about the Tulane University instructor fired over Israel-Palestine political arguments that influenced a syllabus, fueled social media posts — and ultimately ended with her being terminated.
In July, we wrote a breaking-news story about Calvin Duncan, then a little-known candidate running for clerk of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. He won the race by overwhelming margins in a runoff in early December.
Our most-read narrative of the year was an early post in October about a larger story: the fate of Leah Chase School. It’s a story that we will continue to cover as the Orleans Parish School Board weighs the future of the city’s only direct-run school.
