Deconstructing Bogus "Best of.." Lists
Newspapers, magazines and some broadcast outlets will often print lists of the top influencers, the best companies to work for, the most beautiful people, the best this or that. These lists are baloney. They are worst than many awards that celebrities give to each other which are also sketchy.
These lists are the original “fake news.”
I can say this because I was an editor and a participant in the development of many of these lists myself and I’ve been a judge at many events to determine the best of this or that. In almost all instances these choices are casual and biased and most often political. “We can’t put that guy on the list, he’s a dick.”
The only lists that can be trusted tend to be the list of the wealthiest people which is derived from research and even on those lists many people are awkwardly left out.
Most of these lists are published to get publicity for the magazine. Your put major publicity hounds on the lists so they can crow about it and mention the publication over and over. “I’m a top influencer under 30 according to…” It actually ends up in their bio.
These lists appear all over the place. In an entertainment magazine there will be a list of the top movies ever made. In a sports magazine there will be the top quarterbacks who ever played. These lists are never based on actual statistically valid surveys, ever. They are just made up by the editorial staff.
These things are a plague on journalism. Let me explain the way these lists develop behind the scenes.
You are in an editorial meeting and realize that your “Top CEO’s” list is in the next issue. You hastily call a lunch meeting, bring some staffers in and put the list together over sandwiches. This begins by looking at the last year’s list and seeing what you can use from this old list. If you are pressed for time you pretty much jiggle the old list and run that making sure these people are still actually working for the company.
If you really want to shake things up, you put some totally new guy at the top, out-of-the-blue. You will literally joke about how this will upset people especially last year’s number one.
It does not take that long before you finalize the list with much of the older information and roll it out. You always get a lot of feedback such as “how could you leave out so and so...” along with “you guys are idiots for choosing this guy over that gal.” “He should have been number 5 not number 6” is another gem. And yes, there is always some obvious person you completely overlooked. Ooops. So sorry.
Nowadays I am sure the complaining is largely over racial quotas. The joke is that the list is nonsense in the first place. And this includes all lists from the top cars lists to the most beautiful people lists to the up-and-coming anything list.
These lists are part of a journalistic fraud and should be banned. And there are probably a few editorial staffs that might agree and want to get rid of them. When that happens the publisher complains because the sales guys need to sell ads for the issue because they know the CEO of some client is going to be on the list and they might want to advertise. So the basic corruptions step in and the bogus lists keep coming. --- jcd | 
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