To read some of the most compelling Bloomberg News stories of the year, click through this inaugural Web Editors' Choice collection. Articles in this compilation weren't necessarily selected for their popularity. Nor were they chosen on any arch-scientific basis or with any fine-print methodology.

The Web Editors' Choice list also isn't comprehensive. We've left out Bloomberg's vivid coverage of Hurricane Sandy and our no-mulligans scrutiny of the Augusta National Golf Club, which now admits both kinds of human beings. Woefully absent, too, are a chilling series on Chinese hacking, Unsafe at Any Bitrate, and America's Great State Payroll Giveaway, which chronicled the fabulous salaries of some public employees. So how were these articles chosen? All the stories here -- and many not here -- are as exquisitely reported as they are well told.