The year in review
Every year newspapers publish "the year in review" during the week between Christmas and New Year's. I rarely read them because they tell me things I already know, which pretty much makes them irrelevant. Do I need to remember that Virginia Tech was rocked by a massacre or that Anna Nicole died or that the Red Sox won the pennant?
Do you read them?
Would it have any more value if we wrote local year-in-review stories? If we reminded you that City Council told the police chief to do something about gangs, and that Skybus is coming here, and that while the Grimsley girls basketball team lost in the state championship game, the Dudley boys football team won?
I don't think so, but I'm probably too close to it.
Personally, I prefer the stories that tell me what's coming up, which are harder to do, but at least tell me something I don't know.
Psst...the dirty little secret is that newspapers write those stories to fill space during the one week of the year in which news takes breather -- unless you're in Pakistan -- and filling up the paper with quality content is tougher than getting a Hannah Montana ticket at face value.
*** I'm not counting the top 10 best stories: best movies, best books, best CDs and the like. Those have value to me.
Comments (3)
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John, one of the things I've found most liberating about being all-digital with PegasusNews,com is that there's not cutting or padding to fill and edition. We post what we post. So, on a busy day, we may post more than would go in a paper, but during the holiday doldrums we just post a few things a day as warranted and recharge our batteries.
That said, local year-enders (which we did) can be worthwile if you segment them enough. The year in theater; the year in schools; the year in local music. I've learned something from all of our year-enders, although we skipped the obvious mayoral election recaps, etc, because we knew others would be doing that.
Happy New Year to you and all the G'boro crew!
Posted on December 31, 2007 11:25 AM
Drop the Week in Review from your Sunday paper, too.
Posted on January 2, 2008 12:38 PM
Why?
Posted on January 2, 2008 12:55 PM