Question of the Day: List-mania
The end of the year is rapidly approaching, which means the media world has once again become obsessed with lists. There are top ten lists popping up in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and TV for everything: crises and controversies, news stories, celebrity train-wrecks, movies, songs, books, and tv shows, iPhone applications, games (both video games and sports games), scientific breakthroughs, even blunders. Just in time for the holidays you’ll find books featuring the top magazine stories of the year, best fiction or sports writing. One columnist wrote up his top top ten lists for the year. Time Magazine published a whole issue devoted to lists.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Do you read these lists? What do you do with them? For some reason, I save these lists. I just cleaned out a big pile of paper in my office and found lists dating back to 2005 — everything from “Next Year’s Big Ideas” (most of which, on further review, ended up not being so big after all) to “Big Names From the Last Year” (most I remember, but haven’t heard about since). Needless to say, keeping those lists didn’t do much beyond take up space. Now I’m wondering whether reading these lists is even worth it.
Question of the day: Do these lists matter? Our media spends a lot of time culling and publishing/airing these lists — but for what? If you say yes, what lists matter most, and why? If your answer is “they don’t matter – what a waste of space”, then tell me what the media should spend the end of the year writing about and focusing on.
Thoughts?
Brian is Managing Director of little m media which provides strategic guidance and support to organizations around the use of the internet and technology to facilitate communications, engagement, education, and mobilization.
