A lot of newspapers use the end of the year to recap the events of the previous 12 months, or look ahead to the next calendar year.
Last year, at the Antelope Valley Press, without much on the local events schedule between Christmas and New Year's, we produced more than seven pages of content, including three double trucks over three days. The project included a chronological list of key stories, with photos; a list of the top 20 newsmakers with ties to the Valley, topped by former Palmdale resident and 2009 NASCAR Trucks champion Ron Hornaday Jr.; and a list of top 20 stories of the year, topped by the Valley native and New Mexico girls soccer player who became famous for rough play in a conference tournament soccer game against BYU.
The staff voted on the order of finish for the newsmakers and stories of the year.
Sports editors around the country were asked about their year-end reviews, if they do them. Here are the responses:
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We do both a print and on-line year-in-review package. Normally for the print version we canvass the staff and ask them to vote for the top 10 Arizona stories of the year, and run the sports covers from those 10 days.
The on-line report is part of the newsroom's overall package — http://www.azcentral.com/review/2010/ — and consists of top stories from several major sports categories as well as look-aheads to what to watch for and we want to see next year.
— Mark Faller, Arizona Republic
For end of the year stories, our columnist does a top-10 list, about 4 inches per item. We don't have a set day to run it this year, more on a space available.
— Gary Rogo, Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, Conn.)
In the past, I've done a "10 in the End" daily feature counting down the top 10 local stories of the previous year. It provides at least one local story each day from Dec. 22 to Dec. 31. And it gives the readers something to talk about or look forward to.
I've also done the same thing with photos. I would have our photographer pick his favorite 10 sports photos of the previous year and I would run one each day. I called it “10 in the End, Photo Edition.”
— John D. Brooks, Marshall (Texas) News Messenger
We do a year-end package because the rest of the paper does one and we have to follow suit. The challenge is still to do find unique ways to do it, other than just top 10 stories and list of deaths.
— Reid Laymance, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
We have a tradition at The Daily Record of having our staff vote on the top 10 local sports stories of the year and we put together a pre-packaged "Year in review" front-page and jump-page layout that runs on Dec. 31. We work in file photos or headshots for each of the top 10 stories, as well as including a box that shows how the voting points were spread out.
We also have a box that shows the most read stories from our website from the year.
— Aaron Dorksen, The Daily Record (Wooster, Ohio)
Our year-end package worked pretty well last year, and we'll do it again this year on Sunday, Dec. 26 since Dec. 25 is a dormant local sports day.
It was simply pdf reproductions of a section cover from the past year which led with one of our year-end top 10 stories, ranked by a staff vote. They went on facing inside open pages, with front-page refers. The top story last year, which was a girls soccer state title, took up an entire page with about a 20-inch retrospective story.
Nos. 2-10 were smaller reproductions, maybe 2×4 inches, with an accompanying paragraph retrospective capsule. This turned into a pretty labor-efficient way of doing things. We're working to figure out how this can look on-line in our new web CMS.
— Ben Brigandi, Williamsport (Pa.) Sun-Gazette
We plan our year-end packages to run on Dec. 24 and 27, the papers before and after Christmas.
Our year-end package includes stories on our male and female prep athletes of the year, which includes a video interview with each, and a photo/story package of our top 10 area stories of the year. We haven’t mapped out any online stuff for the top 10 stories, but I suspect we will post something on our blog.
— James Cimburek, Yankton (S.D.) Press & Dakotan
We do not do year in review packages anymore. We gradually phased them out, and have stopped running them altogether. Online, we do an overall pictures of the year, for news and sports.
— Scott Monserud, Denver Post
We do a year-in-review package on the final Sunday of the year. Typically we pick the top 10 local sports stories, and run photos with them. We also tease to a photo gallery online.
Space permitting, we run a national story or two along with it. We also do a lookahead story for the first Sunday of the new year, touching on what is coming from a big event perspective.
— James Lefko, Indianapolis Star
We used to do a year-ender, a page with several categories (headlines, highs and lows, etc.) for national, state and local sports in review.
This year, we're running a series on A1 from Dec. 26-Jan. 6 on trends we'll see in the next year. One of the segments is sports, and deals with depleted athletic budgets for some high schools and the fact that the haves and have-nots gap is widening, and results in sports are a reflection of that.
— Mary Ullmer, Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press
On the year-in-review packages, we no longer do a look-back at the previous year. We’ve come around to the belief that there isn’t much to be gained by looking back.
Our plan this year is to take two consecutive Sunday papers, the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s, to present packages of stories that look ahead to 2011.
One will have quick-hit contributions from the entire staff briefly looking ahead at things to expect in his or her sport/team.
The second weekend will be more focused on a theme for major sports in 2011, with our national beat reporters providing their take on that theme. Each package will have a substantial presence on the Sports front, and either a double truck or at least two open facing pages inside for display. Both of those packages will be augmented on line with photo galleries and aggregated content, in addition to other elements.
— Mike James, Los Angeles Times
I don't do year-end project for print. I don't think it has much traction for readers. But, we are doing year-in-sports photo retrospective. We think that will be a hit.
— Michael Anastasi, Salt Lake Tribune
We do a top 10 local sports stories review that runs on New Year's Eve that follows the same theme as our top 10 local news stories from the past year.
— Robert Gagliardi, Wyosports.net/Wyoming Tribune Eagle (Cheyenne, Wyo.)
We do a year-in-review package that takes up the whole front for the Jan. 1 sports section. It's just a quick writeup of each the top 10 local stories of the year with photos.
— David Fawcett, News & Messenger (Manassas, Va.)
We used to do a more in-depth year-in-review package. However, as our staff has gotten smaller over the years, we've relied more on AP for year-end features. One easy year-end thing we do annually that seems to be pretty popular is a year-in-quotes page. One of our veteran staffers compiles quotes throughout the year and we run a page of some of the best quotes of the year. It's pretty easy to put together and readers seem to enjoy it.
— Eric Breier, North County Times (Escondido, Calif.)
We compile a top-10 local sports stories list with a few graphs about each one that goes as a centerpiece. With everything else going on, we don’t have a lot of space to devote to year-end and news side does an all-encompassing section.
— Gregg Dewalt, Florence (Ala.) TimesDaily
We used to do year-end stories but dropped it after getting little response. The only we do now is the top-10 high school stories of the year, written by one of our high school writers who contributes a weekly column.
— Roy Hewitt, Cleveland Plain Dealer
This has varied over the years, but the main thing we do is a look ahead, often combined with the rest of the newsroom. We'll use some wire review stories as merited/needed.
— Jim O'Connell, Colorado Springs Gazette
I have generally dispensed with end-of-year packages, somewhat because the two markets in which I have been sports editor — SF Bay Area and South Florida — are plenty busy at that time of year. When I have done end-of-year packages, I have emphasized the offbeat rather than trying to do anything comprehensive.
— Dave Tepps, Palm Beach Post
We don't do any kind of year-in-review stuff. Maybe we should, but actually the holiday time is fairly busy for us and there's always a slacker like me taking some vacation on a use-it-or-lose-it basis before the year runs out.
— Tommy Deas, Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News
Neither we, nor cityside has been consistent on year-end reviews. We have gotten away from the chronology, but we do name a sportsperson of the year (in column form) and have a piece that reviews the highlights of the scholastic sports year.
— Chuck Pollock, Oleans (N.Y.) Times Herald
Year in review is a bit scattered. We’ve done several things over the years, including a look-ahead calendar that has the big sports events of the upcoming year (national and local) as well as the standard top 10 stories of the year.
— John Boyette, Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
For year end we do a top 10 stories of the year. I provide a list of stories, maybe 30 or so, to our staff and to some of our top freelance guys, and they vote on the top 10. We run one long story with art on all the stories, plus a graphic of some of the top stories from year's past and those that got other votes this past season. We typically don't do much online (other than run the story), but that is changing this year.
— Bill Bowman, Sunbury (Pa.) Daily Item/The Danville News
We almost always do a year-ender on the final Sunday of the year. This year we'll catch up to about a dozen sports newsmakers with vignettes, leading with a couple of the best — i.e. ex-NFL coach Jim Mora, NCAA softball star Danielle Lawrie or Olympic speedskater J.C. Celski. We'll also plan a light trivia quiz and have readers vote online for the top 10 stories.
— Don Shelton, Seattle Times
The main thing is we are in our third year of the awarding the Daily News Sportsperson of the Year. It allows us to brand our own thing and the winners have been receptive. The staff votes, along with selected others, and we run a mainbar on the winner, with short vignettes on the rest of the top five. We add in a fan poll and an online photo gallery. The package also has a short "In Memorium" element, where we write short appreciations for the most prominent people to die in the past year. We also are adding in a reader vote for the most memorable and most disappointing moment in Philly sports for the year.
— Josh Barnett, Philadelphia Daily News
We don't typically do a year-in-review package. Our news-side does one, and I really have never liked them and see them as a waste of time and a space-eater on a week when our sections are typically tight.
— Daniel Shirley, Macon (Ga.) Telegraph
We do a year-in-review, but it's not as elaborate as it used to be. It's basically one big story. It's not fancy journalism, but I do think it's interesting to the average fan out there. People like lists of things.
— Greg Brownell, Glens Falls (N.Y.) Post-Star
As for year-end stories, we do a top 10 stories feature for each of our sports sections. We run this feature on New Year's Day and it dominates our front page.
— Scott Martin, Kennebec Journal/(Augusta, Maine) Morning Sentinel
We don't demand these each year, because they feel flimsy if they're forced. This year, though, we're working on a year-ender related to sports photography. The timing/hook: The Register won a Pulitzer in spot news photography this year, which launched a "Celebration of Photography" focus for the rest of 2010. We asked each shooter to pick their favorite sports photo, then add a sentence about how they executed it, why they think it turned out well, etc. We'll give it an online wrinkle with a playoff/bracket kind of feel where readers narrow eight to four, four to two, then an eventual winner. That's intended to add a digital component, interactivity, debate/discussion and fun. We'll have the winner write a small sidebar to run with the winning image — that will be prominently displayed and could anchor a cover or inside package.
— Bryce Miller, Des Moines Register
We’re not doing a year-end “stories of the year” package this year (haven’t for a couple of years), mainly because I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm for it. However, I am going to compile a collection of “snapshots” from our staff — short (6-8-inch each) highlights from each staffer, about something that touched them in 2010. They can be somewhat personal (like, say, the night Whitey Herzog got angry at a question I asked, ended our interview and tossed me out of the suite at Hammons Field) or they can be about a player, team or game. Whatever they want. It’s a take-off on the “Reporter’s Notebook” the news department started running weekly a few months ago, where a reporter takes readers behind the scenes of a story or relates something else he or she came across. It has gone over well in the community and presents our reporters in a more personal light (the photographers have their own weekly column with a similar slant).
— Pam Clark, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader
We spread our top 10 stories of the year through the final five days, doing two per day through New Year’s Eve.
— Dan Spears, Wilmington (N.C.) StarNews
