Long-time readers of the Cheney Free Press will remember the days of our end-of-year feature, “The Year in Review.” Usually a two-part synopsis of the year in a month-by-month format, they were long, ponderous recounting of the events of the year.
If they proved difficult to read, rest assured, they were difficult to produce. In fact, there are probably a couple computer keyboards from that era in storage, blackened by the newsprint we had to wash off our hands every 20 minutes or so.
A couple of years ago we decided to do something different and go with a top-10 recounting of the stories that affected us the most during the previous year. That process received good reviews from those who bothered to tell us so — and thank God!
We have refined the selection process this year. Whereas in the past we simply discussed what we thought were the top stories of the year, this year we have ranked them.
The ranking was simple. After a discussion of the editorial board members about which stories should be considered — using such considerations such as number of people impacted, what received the most media coverage, reader popularity through our online outlets and other factors — we each took a list of 10 news stories and 10 sports stories, and ranked them, with 10 being the most important, nine being the next and so on.
We then added the vote totals together to determine our ranking. That process did lead to four ties, three in news and one in sports. Instead of instituting some sort of a tiebreaker to determine rank, we elected to have the ties remain ties.
We realize there were probably some issues we left out, and we have already thought of a couple of those. But in any listing, there will always be items that don’t make it.
We hope you enjoy this look back at 2015 in both our Dec. 31 and Jan. 7, 2016 issues. And we wish you peace, happiness and prosperity in the coming new year.
John McCallum
Editor
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