Yesterday, we revealed The Batavian's top ten individual posts for 2008—you can still check them out and vote for your favorite! Today, we list our Top Ten Stories: those big news items and grand themes that kept the coverage rolling and the readers reading. Many of our bigger stories, in fact, were made so by your contributions.
As before, feel free to argue the selection or recommend your own. just make sure you vote when we release the survey in a little while.
Here are your Top Ten Stories of 2008. We tried to select those ongoing stories that had the most impact on the community and were covered in depth by our voracious news staff and through reader contributions. Most of these stories played out over several days, some over several weeks, even months! Remember, these are not in any order:
House fire on Lewiston Road claims life of teenage boy...
About eight months ago, a fire at a home on Lewiston Road claimed the life of 17-year-old Erik Mooney. Howard Owens was on scene that day and recorded some video coverage of the aftermath, spoke with some neighbors and kept up consistent coverage for several days following the incident.
This story started with a visit from the management of the Rochester Red Wings, who told the Batavia City Council that it was no longer financially feasible to allow the city's youth football program to occupy the outfield of Dwyer Stadium during the off-season. From there, the emotion, confusion, resentment and silliness only compounded until youth football took all its toys and went home, as it were, to Lion's Park.
Muckdogs win NY-Penn League Championship...
Nobody saw this one coming, which only made the story all the more dramatic and wonderful. Really, the coverage of the championship was only the summit of an entire season's worth of top notch sport's reporting from several people, especially Muckdog's intern Molly Radzinski, who brought us regular game updates, video and behind-the-scenes info on our champs.
Six-year-old brings loaded gun onto school bus...
This story was relatively recent, so probably still fresh for most folks. News that a 6-year-old boy took a loaded handgun onto a city of Batavia school bus was enough to dominate our coverage for a few days running. Both parents of the child were arrested related to the investigation, as well as the child's older brother.
We're quite proud of our elections coverage. We were relentless about it, and it showed. From the race up to the primary, through the big day in November, The Batavian was steeped in reporting, commentary and criticism of the process, the players and the people on the sidelines. Our coverage of the Democratic primary for the 26th Congressional District was unparalleled. And one of our posts about a fake Jon Powers Web site launched by the Jack Davis campaign was one of our most talked about—if not the most commented on—since The Batavian launched in May.
Well, folks. This may be it. It's safe to say that aside from the much broader topic of politics and election coverage, the mall at the Batavia City Centre stirred up more opinion, ire and animosity than any other topic on The Batavian this year. Some of us were baffled time and again by how many people came out of the woodwork to comment on it. Posts by Daniel Jones, Amy Davis, Tim Paine, Mitchell Chess, Charlie Mallow and many more addressed the issue, often pulling 20, 30 or 40 plus comments at a time. Heck, Bill Kauffman even weighed in at one point. Love it or hate it—and most people will lean towards the latter—the mall was most certainly the most talked-about issue of the past eight months.
Pontillo's in Batavia closes—owes more than $112,000 in back taxes...
This story came about thanks to an anonymous tip we received following a story by the Daily News that claimed Pontillo's Restaurant in Batavia was closing down—for a couple weeks only, they said—for renovations. We still don't know if the Daily knew the facts and failed to report them or just did a poor job of researching before running their original story. But Pontillo's is still closed, two months later. The restaurant is on the rolls as owing more than $112,000 in back taxes and one of the Pontillo brothers has since taken the rest to court.
No local story reported on The Batavian drew more people in the span of just a few days than the barn fire at My T Acres last month that sent a massive plume of black smoke curling over the city of Batavia. Howard was on scene with video before most other news sources even knew what was happening.
About two weeks ago, we were pulverized by our first siginificant snow storm of the season. The Batavian provided so much coverage, so consistently throughout the day, that it soon spilled off the page. Brian Hillabush was out driving around town taking great photographs and chatting with folks as they braved through the onslaught of wind and snow. Before even a week was out, we were hit again, winds up near 50 mph tore through the region, and The Batavian was back with more coverage. Many of our readers, too, came through with their own contributions. So many people had turned to The Batavian both to find out what was going on and to share what was going on with each other.
The Batavian was fortunate enough to land Brian Hillabush as our sports editor prior to the start of high school football season. Boy was that a good move. Hillabush was a man obsessed. It seemed as if he was at every game, spoke with every athlete, every coach, even many of the fans. He covered the biggest games of the year, and brought them to life with rich details and background that no other news source seemed to possess.
There you go. We'll get up the survey in a few minutes so you can vote for your favorite.
I'm sure I missed some huge story or other. So again, feel free to remind me. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought Woody the Wayward Steer was the most exciting story of the summer. Really, though, that story belonged to WBTA. Dan Fischer was all over it, reporting regular "bovine sightings" daily. Good times...
