You know, when the story you pick as the top one for the whole year just happens to coincide with one national party’s talking-point needs of the moment in December, you don’t do the credibility of your review any favors: 

The pounding taken by fact and truth in public life from the rise of fake news and propaganda is the 2016 National Story of the Year, according to the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.”The Story of the Year identifies the most important narrative to emerge in public life in the previous 12 months,” said G. Wayne Miller, a Providence Journal reporter, visiting fellow at the Pell Center, and director of the Story in the Public Square initiative.

Sorry, but that’s a joke, made LOL funny by this amazing coincidence with the standalone running gag that is PolitiFarce:

“Because of its powerful symbolism in an election year filled with rampant and outrageous lying – PolitiFact is naming Fake News the 2016 ‘winner,'” they added.

Others would be defensible, but in my opinion, the national story of the year was Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco, both on its own merits and for generating additional stories and even dovetailing with the whole “fake news” thing. Unfortunately, partisan organizations like most mainstream news productions and universities couldn’t pick a story that reminds people of the corrupt core that gives all of the other stories weight and plausibility.