MISSOURI WATCH: BOB GRIFFIN WAS THE TOP STORY? HERE'S A BETTER LIST

Far be it for me to question the collective wisdom and judgment of Missouri editors who took part in a poll just conducted by the world's largest news organization, The Associated Press.

The journalists conducting the poll and those responding to it are professionals, men and women who daily make value judgments that determine what the public sees and reads. The AP is so important that its morning lead story determines what we see in the evening on network and regional TV newscasts, and its influence is so vast that only a small number of nations has anything resembling it, so in effect it determines the news menu distributed 24 hours a day in hundreds of countries around the world.

I thus tremble when I question whether the AP's choice for the most important news event in Missouri in 1995 was Missouri House Speaker Bob Griffin, his political and legal difficulties and his pending retirement from politics.

I know Bob is important, and has contributed much to the state's political climate for a couple of decades, but come on now. If the Speaker was the most important news in Missouri the past 12 months, then Ross Perot and not Newt Gingrich belonged on the cover of Time's Man of the Year issue.

The AP decided that Missouri's third most important news event in 1995 was the return of a National Football League team to St. Louis, although considering the final record of the Rams, some editors might have chosen differently. The fifth most important news in the state in the past 12 months was former Secretary of State Judi Moriarty's court fine and her vision that she might seek public office again.

For the 10th most important news story, The Associated Press chose the exhumation of the remains of the state's most notorious criminal, Jesse James, perhaps in part because the governor's wife attended one of the ceremonies attached to this bizarre act. Incidentally, in case you missed the significance of the decision, the sale of the St. Louis Cardinals by its pinch-penny owners, Anheuser-Busch, to a group of investors was judged the eighth most important event of the year in the Show-Me State. Apparently the local press attached even greater significance to the event by picturing the new owners of the club for three days running on its front page. That must be where the term "overkill" originated.

With all due reverence to my journalistic brothers and sisters and in recognition of my humble position as nothing more than a mere columnist, I hope you will permit me to list my version of the 10 most important news events in our great state. You're welcome to reject my choices, just as I exercised my First Amendment rights with the world's largest news organization.

1. The rapid and extensive growth of power and influence of state government in relation to the federal government. The Republicans' "Contract with America" greatly enhances the power of Jefferson City in a wide variety of fields, including Medicaid, general welfare, insurance, mental health, highways, communications, public health and safety, elementary, secondary and higher education, and environmental protection.

2. The steadily increasing numbers of Republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives and Missouri Senate.

3. The U. S. Supreme Court's helpful ruling that brought about the first canceled check in Missouri's multi billion-dollar desegregation payments to St. Louis and Kansas City.

4. Widespread alterations in the delivery of health services, including mental health, in Missouri and the rapid rise of health maintenance organizations.

5. The astounding growth of Missouri's penal and corrections system and the transfer of teen-age offenders to the adult criminal justice system.

6. The continuing decline of Missouri's big cities and the slowing suburbanization of the metropolitan areas.

7. The growth of commercial farming corporations in rural Missouri.

8. The passing of Missouri's political old guard in Jefferson City and the beginning of the end of political tenure (term limits) that has been a part of state history since 1821.

9. The steady growth of organized gambling (casinos, lottery, bingo) to become a billion-dollar industry and its ill effects on the lives of thousands of Missourians.

10. The disturbing loss of small and medium-size industries in outstate Missouri and the negative effects from corporate downsizing and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.