Published: December 27, 2006 12:02 pm            

How the top 10 stories land on, and in, the roster

Welcome to another installment in the random series I like to call “The way we do the things we do.”

This week’s topic is our annual year in review section. “A Look Back: 2006” will be inserted in Friday’s Clinton Herald. Since the section typically generates a few of the same questions each year, I thought I’d try to answer them pre-emptively.

First — Why isn’t the section coming out on Dec. 31? Well, this year that’s a Sunday, and we don’t print a Sunday edition.

OK then, why isn’t coming out on Dec. 30? Well, for the formal answer, you’d have to check with our mailroom. We can only put so much stuff in one bundle each day. Saturday’s paper always has an A and B section, and almost always has a C and D section, which is a news section we put together late Thursday or Friday paired with the classified ads for Saturday.

These early editions, called pre-runs, are mandatory since our printing press can only run two sections simultaneously, and there’s very limited space for full-color advertising (the front and back page of each section).

Running two sections earlier in the day allows us to put all four sections together.

But when you take those four sections and all of the ad inserts for Saturday, a weekend magazine and who knows what else... well, that doesn’t leave room for a 32-page year in review section. So it got bumped up the Friday.

While all of that information is indeed relevant, I gather most readers are concerned with the important questions. Namely, how do we determine which stories are the top 10 each year and also rank them from one to 10?

I've been producing the section since the end of 2004 and have written for it since 2002. Each year’s top 10 results from a variation on the same theme. This year’s process was fairly simple.

On a day in late November when I had some free time, I headed upstairs to the back room where we have papers from the last few years bound by month. I proceeded to look at the front page of every paper from Jan. 1, 2005, to the present and scribbled down a list of contenders.

I came up with a list of 20. I gave a copy to Herald Editor Charlene Bielema, and we each picked a top 10. We agreed on seven right off the bat. Four of the 20 got no votes at all, but six got one vote from each of us. From that list of six, we each got one veto, one addition and then chose together between the final two.

That list of 10 then went to the newsroom staff and editorial board for ranking. The editorial board includes Herald employees and community members. They all ranked the stories in order of importance, and I did some third-grade math to come up with a winner.

There was a tie between two stories, and in that case I gave the highest position to the story with the most number of No. 1 votes.

Also, this vote took place the morning of Dec. 5... which you may remember as the day the main Deer Ridge Apartment building burned.

We’d already planned a story on the number of serious fires in the area this year, but Char and I decided later in the month to move that story up in the rankings.

It just didn’t seem right at its original post.

The top 10 sports stories works the same way, but on a smaller scale since the sports department is pretty much autonomous.

We opted to add a story chronicling the list of 10 notable people who died in 2006, because as I went through all those front pages (and editorials) I was shocked by how many prominent people passed away in the past 12 months.

Ending our section with a look at how those 10 people affected our lives and were remembered by their loved ones seemed a fitting conclusion to what we hope is a comprehensive retrospective.

Will our choices of the top 10 stories leave everyone satisfied? Of course not. Some will argue for a reranking of the top 10, others will wonder how certain stories were included. It’s a human process, and the humans involved came up with these stories, but just because we’re ears-deep in newsprint doesn’t mean we always know what you as individuals feel is most important.

That’s why we try to involve a good deal of people in the selection process. It’s a lot of fun revisiting the last year (but not every story is a happy memory), and we feel endowed with a great responsibility to provide for the community a record of the year that was.

This year we’ve lived up to that task, and I’ve no problem saying I think we’ve done better this year than the last two under my watch.

So look for the section on Friday, and please take time to enjoy the hard work of some very dedicated people.

This year certainly was one to remember; we just hope to make remembering it a tad bit easier.



Scott T. Holland’s column appears every Wednesday in the Clinton Herald. His e-mail address is scottholland@clintonherald.com.

        

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