If you like predictability and routine, the newspaper business isn’t for you. We start each of our weekly news cycles on Wednesday morning with no idea what might pop up, news-wise, over the next several days, and knowing that we will need to react and adjust to circumstances as they develop. It requires a lot of flexibility and willingness to change course quickly and effectively. But it’s also why we like the work.
Extend that uncertainty over an entire year, and you get an idea how difficult it is to predict what we’ll be writing and reporting about. We just keep looking and moving forward, and the months roll past — until, inevitably, we reach the time of year when we take a deep breath and look back at what transpired.
Our annual Year in Review Issue takes a look at all things Methow — news, features, sports, business activity, community issues, arts and more — that highlighted the previous 12 months. This year it will be printed on Dec. 29. For the past several years, we have compiled a list of the Top 10 News Stories of the Year, based on voting by our print and online readers. Starting this week, we’ll run the 2021 top news stories ballot in the newspaper and on our website, www.methowvalleynews.com. Look for the ballot elsewhere in the paper.
We encourage you to vote (just once, please, we run a legitimate election process with no rigging involved). Email your choices to editor@methowvalleynews.com; or clip out and mail the ballot to P.O. Box 97, Twisp, WA 988556; or vote online by visiting www.methowvalleynews.com. Add comments if you like. We don’t ask you to rank the stories, just choose 10 that you think were most noteworthy.
The ballot has about 25 choices, which were narrowed down from a much longer list of possibilities to make the process manageable. You may conclude that we left something out that should have been included. If so, please let us know. Everything that happens is important to someone.
As a reminder, here are the top stories of 2020, as decided by our readers: COVID; the attempted recall of Okanogan County Commissioner Jim DeTro; the Cold Springs and Pearl Hill fires; grizzlies in the North Cascades; (tie) Ken Westman’s legacy; (tie) Sally Portman retires as Winthrop librarian; (tie) the county’s subdivision moratorium; the Twisp Restoration Project; the fight to open French Creek Road; (tie) local elections; (tie) Okanogan County Fire District 6 levy approved. A few of those are, in one form or another, repeats on the 2021 ballot.
Turns out that we, of course, could have projected late last year that the COVID pandemic would continue to be a predominant story of 2021 after all we endured in 2020. But what else to expect? Wildfires were always a possibility that we needed to prepare for — and look what happened.
And that’s not all. It was an incredibly busy year, made more interesting as our little microcosm of humanity tried to figure out how to jump-start “normality” while continuing to deal with the coronavirus crisis. Who knows — we may see another big, breaking news story unfold in the next few weeks. If so, we’ll mobilize to make sure we cover it aggressively. Although it would be nice if we could just slide into 2022 without much more attention-grabbing activity from 2021.
That said, we do have a few more things to accomplish before we ring in the new year (if ringing should be appropriate). This week, we offer our holiday shopping guide, with the hope that you’ll prioritize your spending with local merchants. They need our support, and the array of gift-purchasing opportunities is remarkable.
In the Dec. 22 issue, you’ll again find a special section featuring Christmas cards created by the community’s second-grade students. Is it OK to say “adorable?” I think you’ll agree that the creativity and kids’ sentiments make the section a fun read at a time of year when we can all use one.
Then we’ll close things out with the Dec. 29 issue and get cranked up for another 12 months of who-knows-what. The way things are going, I expect COVID to be on our top news stories ballot for 2022 as well. I’d rather be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.
