No. 1

The Associated Press has come out with its top 10 news stories of 2011, based as usual on a poll of U.S. editors and news directors. Do you agree with No. 1?

_OSAMA BIN LADEN'S DEATH: He'd been the world's most-wanted terrorist for nearly a decade, ever since a team of his al-Qaida followers carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In May, the long and often-frustrating manhunt ended with a nighttime assault by a helicopter-borne special operations squad on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot dead by one of the raiders, and within hours his body was buried at sea.

I always wrestle with whether the top story should be the one that had the most immediate impact on our attention spans or one that got less attention but affected more people or had longer-lasting implications. In years when I'm inclined toward the latter, I would vote for something like Japan's earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis, No. 2 on this year's list, or the Arab Spring, No.3. This year I'm going with the most impact, though, so the bin Laden choice seems right to me. By the time we nailed him, it was so far removed from 9/11 and the start of our "war on terror" that it didn't have that must real-world effect,