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CNN Live Today
CNN.com Year in Review
Aired December 26, 2002 - 11:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: From the specter of war with Iraq to the terror of the D.C.-area sniper attacks, some of the top stories of 2002 reflect the tense times facing the country and world.
Technology correspondent Dan Sieberg joins us for a look at CNN.com's year in review.
Hi, Dan.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka.
That's right. You know, narrowing down the top stories of any year is always a difficult task. But the editors at CNN.com have culled them together and put it online. First, we should tell people where need to go. It's CNN.com/YIR, for Year in Review.
And we can tell you now exactly what you can find on this particular site. You can see the main page here. There's also a list, if you can see here, of the top 10 sites that were chosen by the editors at CNN.com. They ranked the crisis in Iraq at the top. You can see the sniper attacks number two. Terror reins, war in Afghanistan, some of the other ones going down, the top 10 list that they have narrowed down.
Now if you consider yourself somebody who follows the news, you watch CNN a lot, you can put your knowledge to the test. There's something here called a news junky quiz. If you click on that, it will bring up a number of different questions. The first one here is based on the Academy Award that went to Denzel Washington. The question here, who was the first African-American to win an academy award for best actor. I happen to know the answer. It's Sidney Poitier. But it will come up and tell you that you're right. You can go on and choose any number of the other questions that are here, and test your knowledge, in a sense, of what happened in 2002.
Now, from there you can also interact in a number of other different ways. Probably the most interesting one we can show people here is this poll. You see we've got the editors that ranked the top 10 stories. If you click on each one of these, it gives you more information about each story, so you can get a general overview.
Then if you want to cast your own ballot, even if you feel like you don't agree with the editors or there are things you'd like to change or tweak, you can click on the poll, the readers' poll, and you can see here it lists much more than ten stories, several of the top stories of 2002. You would go into the select menu here, and you would choose which preference you want to set and where you want to set it.
So if you feel like the palace scandals should rank in the top 10, maybe you say, oh well, that's number seven. I want to choose that as my priority in the top 10. Once you've done that that, you go through all of the stories, if you want to choose one or not.
Finally, when you're done, you cast your vote. And we're going to just take a look at some of the results that have already been cast. You see there's about 770 votes so far. I know that number is going to go up quite dramatically.
So far, with the people who have voted online on this, the tensions in Iraq still is number one for the editors and the people who've been surfing the site here. So clearly, that's a big story this year and on people's minds.
And finally, we can go back to the main page and show people a few other features on the CNN.com year in review page. It's CNN.com/yir, that's the place where you want to go.
There are some other things here, a photo gallery, which is actually coming December 29th. People see there from "Time" magazine, which is a partner with our parent company, AOL-Time Warner. There are also some other links here, even the Netscape Year in Review, also a partner of ours, and a gallery of some more influential stories that maybe didn't make the top 10 list, but were also considered more influential stories. People can go there and see a gallery of pictures and information about each one.
So what a comprehensive list there, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, pretty comprehensive, indeed. It was quite the year, wasn't it?
SIEBERG: Absolutely. And going back to this, you can remember it.
WHITFIELD: Always Fun to look back like that, though.
SIEBERG: Yes, exactly, you know, just to see exactly what happened over the year.
WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks a lot, Dan.
SIEBERG: All right.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 26, 2002 - 11:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: From the specter of war with Iraq to the terror of the D.C.-area sniper attacks, some of the top stories of 2002 reflect the tense times facing the country and world.
Technology correspondent Dan Sieberg joins us for a look at CNN.com's year in review.
Hi, Dan.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka.
That's right. You know, narrowing down the top stories of any year is always a difficult task. But the editors at CNN.com have culled them together and put it online. First, we should tell people where need to go. It's CNN.com/YIR, for Year in Review.
And we can tell you now exactly what you can find on this particular site. You can see the main page here. There's also a list, if you can see here, of the top 10 sites that were chosen by the editors at CNN.com. They ranked the crisis in Iraq at the top. You can see the sniper attacks number two. Terror reins, war in Afghanistan, some of the other ones going down, the top 10 list that they have narrowed down.
Now if you consider yourself somebody who follows the news, you watch CNN a lot, you can put your knowledge to the test. There's something here called a news junky quiz. If you click on that, it will bring up a number of different questions. The first one here is based on the Academy Award that went to Denzel Washington. The question here, who was the first African-American to win an academy award for best actor. I happen to know the answer. It's Sidney Poitier. But it will come up and tell you that you're right. You can go on and choose any number of the other questions that are here, and test your knowledge, in a sense, of what happened in 2002.
Now, from there you can also interact in a number of other different ways. Probably the most interesting one we can show people here is this poll. You see we've got the editors that ranked the top 10 stories. If you click on each one of these, it gives you more information about each story, so you can get a general overview.
Then if you want to cast your own ballot, even if you feel like you don't agree with the editors or there are things you'd like to change or tweak, you can click on the poll, the readers' poll, and you can see here it lists much more than ten stories, several of the top stories of 2002. You would go into the select menu here, and you would choose which preference you want to set and where you want to set it.
So if you feel like the palace scandals should rank in the top 10, maybe you say, oh well, that's number seven. I want to choose that as my priority in the top 10. Once you've done that that, you go through all of the stories, if you want to choose one or not.
Finally, when you're done, you cast your vote. And we're going to just take a look at some of the results that have already been cast. You see there's about 770 votes so far. I know that number is going to go up quite dramatically.
So far, with the people who have voted online on this, the tensions in Iraq still is number one for the editors and the people who've been surfing the site here. So clearly, that's a big story this year and on people's minds.
And finally, we can go back to the main page and show people a few other features on the CNN.com year in review page. It's CNN.com/yir, that's the place where you want to go.
There are some other things here, a photo gallery, which is actually coming December 29th. People see there from "Time" magazine, which is a partner with our parent company, AOL-Time Warner. There are also some other links here, even the Netscape Year in Review, also a partner of ours, and a gallery of some more influential stories that maybe didn't make the top 10 list, but were also considered more influential stories. People can go there and see a gallery of pictures and information about each one.
So what a comprehensive list there, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, pretty comprehensive, indeed. It was quite the year, wasn't it?
SIEBERG: Absolutely. And going back to this, you can remember it.
WHITFIELD: Always Fun to look back like that, though.
SIEBERG: Yes, exactly, you know, just to see exactly what happened over the year.
WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks a lot, Dan.
SIEBERG: All right.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
