| Top 10 stories for 2006: Destiny, Jeffs top lists of readers, editors | |||||
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By Doug Smeath Deseret Morning News | |||||
Polygamy, a murdered child and political controversy dominated the headlines in Utah — and made waves nationally — in 2006. Nine editors at the Deseret Morning News have selected the year's 10 biggest stories, and at the top of the list was the arrest in Las Vegas of Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs. Jeffs was arrested in August, after several months on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He faces charges of rape as an accomplice and is accused of arranging child-bride marriages for members of his polygamist church. The story brought national and international attention to Utah, as polygamy stories here often do. In fact, the editors' top three picks were covered not only by local media but by reporters across the nation. The editors' second choice was the July murder of 5-year-old Destiny Norton by Craig Gregerson, a neighbor who has pleaded guilty to killing her and then sexually assaulting her body in his basement. The third pick was President Bush's visit in August to a national convention of the American Legion in Salt Lake City. Bush's visit was met with rallies and protests in the street, including thousands of people who gathered to listen to Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson speak against the president and the war in Iraq. That story brought much attention to Utah, both in the news and from liberal bloggers, who heaped praise on Anderson and marveled that this story was coming out of conservative Utah. In addition to the editors' poll, the Morning News asked readers to vote on the newspaper's Web site for their top picks, and while the list looked slightly different from the editors', it was close. Readers selected Norton's death as their No. 1 pick, with Jeffs' arrest at No. 2. Third on their list was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' announcement of plans to replace the foundering Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center malls with City Creek Center, a 20-acre mixed-use indoor-outdoor complex of shopping, housing and office space. Editors selected City Creek Center as their fourth-biggest story of the year. The online poll drew 188 voters — many of them likely drawn in by a contest that offered awards to readers whose picks most closely matched the editors' final list. The winner was Salt Lake City resident Anthony Logan, who will receive $100 for picking eight of the editors' top 10 and matching three exactly. Reader Michelle Meikle of Farmington won $50 for placing second in the online contest. Third-place winner Brady Snyder, a former reporter for the Morning News who now works for the Salt Lake Rescue Mission, will receive $25. Logan, 33, recently moved back to Salt Lake after living in St. George from August to November. Because he was in southern Utah during Jeffs' arrest, he was inundated by the news, as it became a regular subject of conversation among friends and co-workers. "Stories that have a lot of controversy will spark a lot of national interest," the New York native said. "Unfortunately, the polygamy issue is always going to spark interest. It was in the past. Utah has moved on, but nationally people like to harp on it, kind of like a dig on Utah." Logan matched editors by picking Jeffs as the No. 1 story and Norton's murder as No. 2, but his third-place vote, while more in line with his fellow readers, missed the mark by four places when compared with the editors' choices. Logan's pick: the successful surgical separation of 4-year-old conjoined twins Kendra and Maliyah Herrin in August. Morning News readers ranked that story fourth overall, while the editors placed it seventh. Higher on the editors' list were the U.S. Department of the Interior's September rejection of a proposal to store spent nuclear-fuel rods on the Goshute Indian reservation in Skull Valley — a story that didn't make it to the readers' Top 10 — and wrangling over public funding for a stadium for Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake, which placed sixth in both the editors' and readers' polls. Readers were more interested than editors in the December sentencing of Timmy Brent Olsen to 12 1/2 years in federal prison. Olsen was found guilty of 15 counts of perjury for lying to a grand jury and a federal agent about his role in the rape and murder of 15-year-old Kiplyn Davis, who went missing from Spanish Fork High School in May 1995. The story was seventh in the readers' voting but just missed making the editors' Top 10. Readers also saw the local impact of the war in Iraq as a bigger story in 2006 than did editors, ranking at eighth the deaths of four Utah servicemen in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. The war did not make the editors' Top 10. Rallies for immigrant rights, which drew thousands to the streets throughout Utah in April, ranked eighth in editors' eyes and ninth for readers. Both readers and editors rounded out their Top 10 lists with rising gasoline prices that ultimately led Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to call for an investigation. The resulting report said retailers were gouging customers but had not broken any laws. E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com | |||||
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deseretnews.com Originally published Sunday, December 31, 2006 | |||||
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