The Rapid City Journal Editorial Board responds to the AP's list of the top 10 South Dakota news stories for 2005:
Associated Press editors and broadcasters voted the Nov. 27-28 blizzard in central and eastern South Dakota as the top story in South Dakota in 2005. A blizzard??
No. 2 in the list of the state's top stories was Ellsworth Air Force Base's possible closure.
Granted that the Top 10 list was chosen by a vote of journalists - who tend to make a mountain out of a snowdrift anyway - but how is a blizzard more important than Ellsworth?
The East River blizzard story melted away after about two weeks, but the fate of Ellsworth was a front-page story from May, when the base was put on the Pentagon's base closure list, until August, when it was taken off. During that four-month period, South Dakota was facing the loss of its second-largest employer. We were plenty worried, even if the rest of the state apparently was not.
Look at this way: Which story had more long-term consequences for the state? Losing Ellsworth for good? Or losing power for several days? When the Defense Department was contemplating turning the power off at Ellsworth, they weren't planning on turning it back on.
If both events happened on the same day, here's how we would headline it: "ELLSWORTH OFF CLOSURE LIST; Snow falls in East River."
The majority of votes for the AP's Top 10 list came from East River journalists, illustrating once again the differences between East and West River: "If it doesn't happen East River, it's not important."
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