It’s not often you see murder and racism making channel headlines, but they do in our top stories countdown for April.

The former refers to an MSP owner who police say stabbed to death CashApp founder Bob Lee. The latter is about a job posting by a tech company that asked only whites to apply.

If that’s not enough grim news, our ranking of top stories – those most-read on Channel Futures last month – includes plenty of companies laying off workers. We’ve been keeping you up to date all year on the carnage in the tech sector.

Fortunately, while these troubling stories were lowlights for the month, there are highlights in our top 20. Take Marty Bauerlein, for instance, a longtime distribution leader, landing a new job. And perhaps the ultimate high is our gallery featuring the parties and giveaways at this week’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

We’ve got it all in the slideshow above, which counts down the top stories in April that you, our loyal reader, determined. We look at online pageviews and the most-read articles in our daily and weekly newsletters to figure out what makes the list. You can throw your weight around by signing up for those aforementioned newsletters.

Miss our top stories countdown for March? It’s here.