We're in the post-Christmas, pre-New Year's news black hole, so it's time to start looking back on 2006 and trying to figure it out.
Call it the war on terror, a war against Islamofascism or a war between modernity and tribalism, we seem to have all but forgotten the struggle we finally had to acknowledge we were in on 9/11. Look no further than the Associated Press' top 10 stories of 2006, which leads off with the war in Iraq and finishes with Darfur (poor Al Gore's Global Warming crisis was only No. 11). I'd name the absence of that struggle from the list my top story of the year. What's it going to take for us to pay attention again, losing a whole city? Also not on the list, but something that deserves top-10 placement, is the YouTube phenomenon. This is the year we'll look back on and realize it's when the fundamental relationship between content providers and content consumers changed forever.
I haven't even seen any ballots for top state news stories, but the takeover of the House by Democrats is the story we'll still be talking about next year. With both houses controlled by Republicans, Gov. Daniels was able to get much of his activist agenda through in his first two years. His last two will be a slightly different story.
Locally, I'd make it a toss-up between the downtown stadium, which was already on the list of possibles before it even became an actual proposal, and the county's smoking ban. Both will continue to make news far into 2007. I'd probably lean toward the stadium because there are more long-range implications.
But what do journalists know? Here are bunch of YOUR top-10 searches through Yahoo for the year. Your top overall search was for Britney Spears. Your top two news searches were for the deaths of Steve Irwin and Anna Nicole's son; Iraq came in at No. 3.
And a few more lists:
The top 10 words of the year, led off by "truthiness."
The top 10 baby names of 2006, led by Aiden and Emma.
The top 10 albums of the year, chosen by a Billboard panel of critics. Bob Dylan had the No. 1 spot.
The American Film Institute's choice for the 10 best films of the year.
Consumer affairs lists the top 10 scams of the year, led with, of course, the fake lottery scam.
Top 10 funniest political quotes of the year. And the winner is . . . John Kerry: “If you make the most of (education), you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”
