Everyone has his or her own end of the year rituals. Some people make resolutions for the new year. Others use the time between the holidays and Jan. 1 to take care of perennial chores such as changing the batteries out of smoke detectors and purging email accounts and cell phone numbers. Some use this time to plan for the new year while others use it to drink away the year ending. Journalists have their own end of the year ritual and this is compiling year in review stories and segments.
Journalists like year in reviews for two reasons.
As true as it is that journalists like to drink and secretly wish they could still wear fedora hats, the week between Christmas and New Year's is known as no-man's land in newsrooms. Phones don't ring. Newsmakers are not making news. And anyone holding an elected office and anyone who works for someone holding an elective office is on vacation. Save for Christmas tree fires, and the celebrity death that comes as surely as clockwork this time of year, journalists are left with little to report. This means journalists and editors need something else to fill the next day's news hole/web page/RSS feed. Enter year in reviews.
Typically, a year in review story is composed of the year's top ten stories, and journalists start compiling it around June. Some papers that still have ample staff and motivation may wait until November to name the year's top stories, but it's inevitable that if World War III, or an Indian Ocean tsunami, started in December it would fail to make the year in review list.
Then all that is left for the journalist to do is compose a short opening graf about why these are the selected stories are the stories of the year and then it's back to the office party to hit on cute receptionists, drunken editors and unsuspecting interns.
Secondly but way more importantly, journalists like tooting their own horn and rerunning their best work from the year is the best, easiest and non-egotistical way to do so.
Year in reviews are always an easy story that requires minimal work and results in a clean and shiny prepackaged, easy-to-assemble A1 centerpiece that a journalist can feel good about. While readers eat up year in review stories faster than leftover ham from Christmas, these articles are almost always void of any real news and serve to remind people of what a horrible year they just survived.
Perhaps the best part of year in review stories is readers look toward the new year with anticipation for new stories that are even more depressing than the previous year's.
Happy New Year!
