Top 10 stories for 2006: Destiny, Jeffs top lists of readers, editors
Nine editors at the Deseret Morning News have selected the year's 10 biggest stories, and at the top of the list was the arrest in Las Vegas of Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs was arrested in August, after several months on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He faces charges of rape as an accomplice and is accused of arranging child-bride marriages for members of his polygamist church.
The story brought national and international attention to Utah, as polygamy stories here often do. In fact, the editors' top three picks were covered not only by local media but by reporters across the nation.
The editors' second choice was the July murder of 5-year-old Destiny Norton by Craig Gregerson, a neighbor who has pleaded guilty to killing her and then sexually assaulting her body in his basement.
The third pick was President Bush's visit in August to a national convention of the American Legion in Salt Lake City. Bush's visit was met with rallies and protests in the street, including thousands of people who gathered to listen to Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson speak against the president and the war in Iraq.
In addition to the editors' poll, the Morning News asked readers to vote on the newspaper's Web site for their top picks, and while the list looked slightly different from the editors', it was close.
Readers selected Norton's death as their No. 1 pick, with Jeffs' arrest at No. 2. Third on their list was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' announcement of plans to replace the foundering Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center malls with City Creek Center, a 20-acre mixed-use indoor-outdoor complex of shopping, housing and office space.
Editors selected City Creek Center as their fourth-biggest story of the year.
The online poll drew 188 voters — many of them likely drawn in by a contest that offered awards to readers whose picks most closely matched the editors' final list.
The winner was Salt Lake City resident Anthony Logan, who will receive $100 for picking eight of the editors' top 10 and matching three exactly.
Reader Michelle Meikle of Farmington won $50 for placing second in the online contest. Third-place winner Brady Snyder, a former reporter for the Morning News who now works for the Salt Lake Rescue Mission, will receive $25.
Logan, 33, recently moved back to Salt Lake after living in St. George from August to November. Because he was in southern Utah during Jeffs' arrest, he was inundated by the news, as it became a regular subject of conversation among friends and co-workers.
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