Readers' Top 10 stories for 2005

Floods, fires, a freeway. Fleeing victims of Hurricane Katrina finding refuge in Utah.

Deciding Utah's most "memorable" or "important" news story of 2005 boils down to a variation of the adage: Where you stand is based on where you've sat.

If you've sat in rush-hour traffic on I-15 in Davis County, chances are the November agreement that makes construction of Legacy Highway a reality is your top story of the year.

Or, if you sat and watched hopelessly as the swollen waters and the crumbling banks of the Santa Clara River swallowed your home, that was the top event.

And once again, if you were a loved one of Lori Hacking and sat in the courtroom listening to her husband receive a life sentence for her murder, that overshadowed everything else.

Each year, the Deseret Morning News sponsors a Top Ten contest in which readers are asked to pick what they think are the most important stories of the year. The selections are then matched against the slate of stories Morning News' editors deemed most noteworthy. The readers whose picks most closely matched ours are awarded first-, second- and third-place prize money.

But unlike 2002 — when the Winter Olympics reigned supreme — or 2003 — when Elizabeth Smart was found — 2005 wasn't a year that shouted a dominant story from the rooftops. Instead, it was a year of events that jostled for attention. If the story stayed with you, likely it was personal in some way.

In our online-only contest that drew 144 entries, Kearns resident Neil Thomas earned top honors and $100 by having his first five rankings of stories most closely matched to editors. Thomas, a "barely 50" self-admitted news follower, dubbed the Legacy Highway settlement as the year's top story.

So did we. Sort of.

Eleven editors voted on more than 30 entries — as did readers. Each time an entry made it into the Top 10, it earned points.

On Katrina refugees coming to Utah, seven of 11 editors deemed it was an important enough story to land in the Top 10. Out of those seven, four picked it as the No. 1 story. While that would seem to make it a shoo-in for top honors, it didn't work that way.