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It is a strange thing to look back at the Top Stories of 2007, as they're called nearly everywhere including on our air and this web site. How can the shooting at Trolley Square or the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster be a top anything? I suppose I am just soft-hearted enough to struggle with that word usage. And I realize that after 20 years in the news business, I should know better.
I should feel less, I suppose.
But I don't. I also know that in the strange way these things work, I benefit indirectly from these horrible happenings. When terrible news happens, I benefit because my ratings go up. When horrifying things take place, people understandably want to know about them, so they tune to KSL. It is an honored position we hold to be the voice you trust when the world falls apart. But benefiting, even indirectly, from those events feels terribly wrong.
So my prayer on this New Year's Eve is that the events of 2008, the really big stories you and I both want to know about, will be events of terrific human progress and accomplishment. Wouldn't it be something if I could report to you in the morning that the cure for cancer had been discovered, that not only is violence down in Iraq, but so much so that our troops are coming home in large numbers, that the world is finding a way to care for the children of Africa and even our own state? Would you tune in to learn that shooters changed their minds moments before pulling the trigger instead of carrying out their bloody plans? Would it be as interesting to learn something uplifting about a candidate as it is to learn something lascivious?
I hear the polyanna quality of this blog even as I write the words, but I write anyway. I am naive. I am optimistic. I am a journalist. And I am a believer in mankind and in the future.
Happy new year dear reader and listener of KSL.
