Every year as December dawns we sit down in the newsroom and make our plans for the last issue of the old year and first issue of the new year. We always make these two issues our year in review issues, and we do this for a couple of reasons, some practical and some more esoteric.
From a practical standpoint, those two issues are historically small in terms of advertising and also content. In addition, despite the belief that we newshounds live in our offices and are on call 24/7, realistically we like to spend time with our families, too.
On a side note, Christmas and New Year’s were really terribly placed this year, adding some additional challenges to our end of year work. We go to press every week on Wednesdays, which means that the vast majority of the paper is completed on Tuesday.
However, our printers also like to have holidays off, which meant that we had to have completed the papers on the Mondays before each holiday.
That meant we had less time than usual for our work and it also meant we had to hold our breaths that no major news broke after papers had gone to the printers.
But from a more philosophical standpoint, there is something inherently valuable about looking back at the year that has passed and reminding ourselves of what has occurred.
One downfall of our deadline-driven work is that necessity forces us to always be moving forward. Because we aren’t machines this means that when one issue is put to bed it largely disappears from our consciousness.
So it’s as fun for us to go back through the year’s issues as (we hope) it is for you to read it. For days, our newsroom is filled with some variation of someone mumbling, “Oh yeah! That thing!” every few minutes.
Coupled with that sense of discovery, of course, is often a sense of ennui that so many things have slipped through the old memory banks. It’s amazing how many things get forgotten as the wheel of the year turns.
It always makes me wonder how many non-work related things I’ve already forgotten.
Each editor has their own way of doing their reviews. I tend to first select 10 topic heads, then go through each issue’s story file, week by week, and plunk in stories of importance that fit in the category. Then I go through and edit things down to the bare minimum.
Other editors prefer a more chronological or thematic approach and sometimes the approach is defined by what things have occurred in each of our coverage areas.
Generally speaking, there are always school-related stories, crime-related stories and growth-related stories. There’s always turnover in various municipal positions and local people of note come and go. Sadly, in recent years it’s a foregone conclusion we will have some sort of natural disaster impact to discuss.
I enjoy going back and looking at the photo galleries from the various community events that take place around our communities. Not only is it a fun walk down memory lane, but it can also prove a nice balm when having to remember the less happy stories.
We hope that you enjoy these year end pieces and that you find them as interesting and educational as we do, and that they become a nice signal of moving from one year to another.
Heather Bailey is the editor of The Windsor Times.
