List Day

That's right, sports fans, you read it here first. Welcome to the first annual Working With Words List Day, a soon-to-be-celebrated seminal moment in online journalism sure to one day rank right up there alongside the day that an attractive young woman began accepting online bidders for her hand in marriage. Who knows: perhaps it will one day even come to rival that fateful moment that Matt Drudge's grubby little finger hesitated over the send button in his tiny Hollywood studio apartment before he uploaded his first breathless report that Newsweek was preparing a story on an unnamed White House intern with untoward access to the Presidential member. Well, the reality is that it's pretty hard to compete with sex on the web, but I'll do my best anyway...

So on to the lists! We thought you needed to hear about these three freshly issued lists, two of which are online. Business 2.0 has just released (in print only) its stab at ranking the 100 fastest growing tech companies, and while a handful are based in Israel, only one is headquartered in Ohio. And that, something called Convergys, which hit #80, is down in Bengals country (Cincy, for the sports-challenged). Meanwhile, a more closely watched regional business ranking list (with a longer history), Entrepreneur Magazine's list of most entrepreneurially friendly cities, this year places the Cleveland-Elyria-Lorain crescent way down in the 57th slot, just behind Detroit. The good news: that's up a few notches from last year's 61st place, and also ahead of San Fran and L.A. (no doubt largely due to higher taxes in those otherwise business-friendly areas). This region ranks #12 in the midwest, according to the editors. But of course, one could easily take issue with their methodology, bunching Cleveland with its two smaller burgs to the west rather than its one larger (and healthier) neighbor to the south, Akron.

And then there's the eagerly awaited (among moguls, at least) Forbes list of the richest 400 Americans. I always like to take a gander each year at the relative position of the Brothers Newhouse, Donald (who controls the newspaper side) and Si (who controls the magazines), because their vast holdings include everything from my beloved New Yorker to my (well, I'll have to search for the appropriate adjective to capture my feelings) hometown paper, the Pee Dee. As they do each year with the four offspring of Wal-Mart's founder Sam Walton, Forbes list editors simply evenly split whatever total they estimate for the privately held Newhouse Advance (named for the first paper their dad bought way back in 1922) empire, and assign each brother half of the paper wealth. And this year, they estimate that each brother is worth $7.7 billion, good for a tie at #21 on the list. They thus dropped just a single notch from last year, when their wealth was pegged at the same total. In fact, unlike many of their fellow billionaires, the sober boys from Newark have remained pretty steady through all of the rollercoaster economy of recent years. At $4.5 billion each, they tied for 15th on the '96 list, slipping to 24th the next year and all the way to 43rd place two years later, in '99, even though their $4.5 billion estimated net worth remained constant. In 2000, just as many of their fellow moguls were about to experience a vertiginous drop in net worths that were more closely pegged to the declining stock market, the Newhouse boys were thought to be worth $5 billion each, tied with financier-turned-philanthropist George Soros and just ahead of Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos (whose net worth was about to be walloped with a tsunami). And sure enough, the Newhouses stayed in place a year later, but others fell behind, and the Newhouses rose to 31st on the list in 2001, just ahead of Nike's Phil Knight and MBNA's Al Lerner. By 2002, they had improved all the way to a tie for 20th. Moral of the story? The hare really does tend to beat the rabbit. Anyway, we'll bring you more about the fascinating, secretive Newhouses in future installments...

Because We Like to Bring You Value. I said we have three fresh lists for today, but just because I'm in a generous mood, let me throw in a mention of a fourth, at no additional charge to you, my dear readers. While this one is a year old, I (and most likely you) had never come across it before, and I found it interesting. An organization calling itself Reporters Without Borders, no doubt at least partly styled on the better known Doctors Without Borders, each year ranks the world's nations for relative press freedoms. Red-blooded, breast-beating Americans couldn't be faulted for assuming their country would grab the top spot (especially if they rely for their news solely upon domestic outlets). But alas, the U.S. finds itself only in the 17th spot in the 2002 index, behind some countries you'd expect (like Finland, Canada and Norway) and others you might not (like Portugal, France and Slovenia). A question, which goes unaddressed by the group: did the press-restricting Patriot Act, adopted about a year before this index was compiled last October, play any part in dropping the U.S. ranking? Just a question...

Now It's Your Turn... Okay, we've done all the heavy lifting today here in the Working With Words lab, tracking down these lists, scrutinizing them closely for whatever precious insights they have to reveal. Now it's your turn. Send us your own list of things (at jettorre@voyager.net) that we never write about but should. Make it as idiosyncratic as you like, with as many insanely off-topic subjects as you think appropriate. We promise to read and study them with the same Talmudic attention that routinely goes into the preparation of each day's items. And then we'll likely crumple them up and go back to writing about whatever the hell we feel like, whatever might be stimulating our synapses that day. But at least you'll know in the privacy of your own heart that you tried, however bravely and unsuccessfully, to move us all in more helpful, healing directions...