Enduring the year-end story

Much as I enjoy the holidays, I’m always relieved when they’re over and we can stumble into the new year with renewed optimism. I always look forward to celebrating Christmas with family, and ringing in the new year with friends and festivities. But what gets me down are the year-end stories with which the news media bombard us from Christmas through New Year’s Eve.

Not that there’s anything wrong with reviewing the past year as we enter a new one. It’s part of human nature that shows up in every culture. I do it in my annual Christmas letter to friends and relations. The spirit of review and renewal wears thin, however, when the last days of every year bring a deluge of the year’s highlights in politics, crime, finance, fashion, entertainment, sports, celebrity deaths, etc. The only year-end story I genuinely enjoy reading is Dave Barry’s parody of the genre.

I am sensitive to this because I was a grudging perpetrator of year-end stories for much of my career as a newspaper reporter, publicist and employee publication editor. If there’s anything more tedious than reading year-end stories it’s writing the damn things. I suspect harried newspaper editors embraced year-end stories as a way of filling the expanded editorial space created by Christmas-sale advertising.

Whatever its origins, the year-end story has taken on a tradition of its own. I gritted my teeth and pounded out year-end news releases because employers and clients demanded them and newspapers occasionally published them to fill space. I ran year-end stories in company publications because my bosses and readers expected them and I had space to fill, too. TV stations and cable news outlets pre-record year-end roundups to fill airtime when reporters and anchors are on vacation. Even though space-filling is not an issue on the Internet, year-end stories abound online.

So every year professional scribes are assigned to write year-end stories just because it’s the end of the year and perhaps – perhaps – somebody will read them. I’m grateful that retirement has freed me from this annual chore. Except, of course, for that Christmas letter to friends and relations that I enjoy writing.