A few year-end observations, none of which seem to deserve a full column’s attention. Akin to cleaning out a cluttered closet.
— Our tradition of selecting the top ten stories always seems to have a “side-bar” of some sort. The “ballot” we received from editor Holly Gaskill had 20 possibilities. I would consider nearly half them to be of a positive nature. Unfortunately this might be interpreted that there is some truth to the old adage that bad news seems to get more attention: only two of them made the top ten.
Those two were fun to cover. Sports editor Ryan Walker will gladly expound some more about covering the Norwell girls’ basketball state-final run in February and I had more fun than anticipated working on my part of the solar eclipse in April. The others that did not make the cut included the successful Paddlesports launch site in Vera Cruz, school projects either finished or progressing and the city’s new Lancaster Park opening with the Interurban Trail extension.
Although the other eight stories that made the cut were not necessarily bad news, this contemplation raised the thought of wondering how we might involve our readers in next year’s poll. It would be interesting to compare that to our internal rankings.
— Besides the “top ten” lists, there are others, at least a couple involving words.
Dictionary.com selected “demure” as their word of year and the Oxford dictionary went with “brain rot.” As I understand it, these selections were made based on search engine activity and trends on social media. For example, weekly searches for “demure” on Dictionary.com spiked in August, with more than 13 million queries during the week of August 19. It had something to do with social media. Which of course I don’t understand. Which is probably just as well.
And “brain rot” is also related. It is defined by the powers-that-be as “spending too much time consuming low-quality content on social media.” There have been times this past year, that I had that very feeling after spending too much time watching news on television.
I somehow also feel compelled on New Years Day to go to the website of Lake Superior State University to check on their annual list of words and phrases that should be banished due to what they call “overuse, misuse or abuse.”
“Cringe” topped their list Wednesday, followed by “game changer,” “era,” “dropped,” “IYKYK,” “sorry not sorry,” “skibidi,” “100%,” “utilize,” and “period.” A google search will explain them all if you’re curious enough.
— These lists have been the annual subject of a conversation with a friend; we usually kick around some ideas on what might be a local word of the year and/or a local word or phrase we’d like to see banished, although we’ve never come up with anything definite or printable.
My favorite word with a local angle from this past year is “totality” — as in: we were in the “zone of totality” for the solar eclipse, a truly amazing experience I will not soon forget. And if I had to come up with a phrase I wouldn’t mind not hearing again, it would be “KPI.” Frankly not sure why.
Perhaps it was because I heard it at least once too often without also hearing explanations of exactly what “key performance indicators” might be involved. Overused, misused, abused? Don’t know. That too might be an interesting question to our readers.
So we look forward to another year of words, phrases and cluttered closets. Happy (we hope and pray) new year.
miller@news-banner.com
