Top Stories of 2009

The troubled economy and efforts to revamp the nation’s health care system dominated the public’s news interest in 2009. From the year’s start, Americans kept a close watch on the unfolding economic crisis, as well as Barack Obama’s efforts to grapple with the crisis while trying to make good on campaign promises.

These two topics – the economy and the new administration – then played a part in many of the top stories of 2009. In the second half of the year, the public’s focus shifted more to the debate over overhauling the nation’s health care system. Interest in health care reform grew in late summer – while Congress was in recess – as many lawmakers faced angry constituents at town hall meetings in their districts. Interest remained high as the debate unfolded in Washington.

In the end, only two events made it into the "top ten" stories of the year -- the Inauguration and the Swine Flu (some see a similarity - jds). The remaining eight were issue oriented stories and the public remained quite interested throughout the year. The economy was the big story with "jobs" and the national debt being the top stories in this category.

You should know that these are the top stories of the year but not necessarily the stories of greatest concern to the public. For example, while the death of Ted Kennedy took up 27 percent of the coverage for the week of Aug 24-30, only 17% of the population was interested in the story. The 2009 mid-term election, NY23 and all that, received 13% of the total coverage but only 4% of the population cared.

On the other hand, the Inauguration received 23% coverage, a comparatively large number with interest levels at 47% - the number one story of the year by this measurement. That was good news for the Administration had it been able to hang its hate on the popularity of that moment.

On the negative side, the number two story of the year was the Stimulus, receiving 27% of the coverage read by 37% of the population - a very angry populaton.

Click on the chart to the right to enlarge.

How to use this chart - find the story you want referenced = a particular point on the chart; trace straight down for the percentage of news coverage; trace vertically to the left to discover the actually percentage of popular interest.

What did we - the people - care most about? Obama's plans, his inauguration, that danged old Stimulus bill, the health care debate (No. 3 on the chart), the Hudson airliner crash and the Somali pirate story, the budget and others.

Will the coming elections be issue based or will ideology play more a role than in the past - it should, you know. Ideology? Yes - you know, like Commi verse Freedom Fighters and Marxism versus
Capitalist Morality (as opposed to Capitalist greed).