Best Step in the Right Direction: Cincinnati voters - well, a tiny percentage of them - passed Issue 4 last May to begin directly electing the city's mayor in 2001. After years of studies, debates, plans and compromises, a coalition from the local Republican, Democratic and Charter parties devised a ballot issue that appealed to enough of a cross-section of voters to win. The new system features a nonpartisan primary, with the top two vote-getters squaring off in a head-to-head race for mayor, who gets some increased power. It might not be the ideal scenario, but it's worth a shot.

Best Partial Family Values: Kroger placed "blinders" over the cover of Cosmopolitan magazines at the checkout counters of all of its grocery stores around the country. The final straw, apparently, was Cosmo's February issue, which sported cover headlines promoting "Sex Tricks" and "His Secret Sex Spots." Store officials said children shouldn't be faced with such material when they're in the checkout line with Mom or Dad. Of course, Glamour was left uncovered, even though its February issue promoted "23 Erotic Ways to Make Sex With Him Sweeter" and "Sex and Size: Is He Too Big? Are You?" And a half-dozen or more gun enthusiast magazines remained available to everyone, including minors.

Best (and Only) Benefit of Stacy Owen Leaving WNKU: Scott Levy is now doing a regular weekday afternoon shift. When longtime morning music host and all-around good gal Owen left the public station for Louisville, on-air musical chairs put Levy on the 12-2 p.m. shift. Previously, he could be heard on WNKU (89.7 FM) only on the weeknight graveyard shifts and the excellent Folk City show on Sunday mornings. But now a wider audience can enjoy Levy's smart-alecky banter and impeccable taste in Folk, Rock and World music.

Best Friend for Jazz: With a slightly stronger signal and the same unerring commitment to broadcasting real Jazz to real Jazz listeners, WNOP (740 AM) is like the cockroach that won't die. A new Web site will debut soon, offering the opportunity for AM-challenged Cincinnatians to hear the station over the Internet.

Best Scapegoat: Cincinnati City Manager John Shirey. Anytime anything goes wrong in the city, his bosses on city council publicly wonder how good a job he's doing. Some, like Councilman Charles Winburn, seem to blame Shirey for everything from Kenyon Martin's injury to global warming.

Best Overstatement on City Council: Todd Portune's motion to create an anti-Bud Selig zone to protest the baseball commissioner's stubborn refusal to re-examine Pete Rose's lifetime banishment from the game. A close second: Charles Winburn's statement about using the (Phil) "Heimlich maneuver" to investigate an apparent missed opportunity by the retirement board to make millions in the stock market.

Best Understatement About Our Collective Future: When the Cincinnati Metro Region Resource Book (aka the Gallis report) was released last summer, it extolled the Tristate's future possibilities as "a single, strong, competitive force on the global stage." There's just one thing holding us back from our collective destiny, the report concluded: "A sense of complacency, characterized by an attitude that everything is just fine, can block such dynamic movement." Well, knock us over with a feather! What Michael Gallis, the urban planner hired to prepare the report, didn't seem to understand is that complacency is Cincinnati's defining civic characteristic.

Best Vacancy: The hole in the ground on Race Street between Fifth and Sixth streets, ostensibly being held for a future Nordstrom department store. This is the second time in a decade that the city has chased out perfectly good small businesses from a prime downtown development parcel, only to end up digging a big hole and waiting until a department store chain makes up its mind on how many millions of dollars it wants from city taxpayers to build a store there. Was the Lazarus store at Fifth and Vine really worth it?

Best Auditor. Councilman Phil Heimlich, who sniffed out the scandal at Genesis Redevelopment Corporation. A close second: City Auditor Greg Hanfbauer, who discovered the city's road repair funding diversions.

Best End of an Era: Christmas 1999 was the last holiday season that the Rudd family turned on the region's largest light display put on by a private homeowner. For 36 years, the Rudd family's farm has been the site of an incredible show featuring more than 1 million - yes, 1 million - bulbs. Rudd Christmas Farm, 1205 Cassell Run Road, Blue Creek, 937-544-3500.

Best Local Media Entrepreneur Under 30: Christian Strike, whose Strength Magazine has become a fixture for American youth interested in snowboarding, skateboarding and Hip Hop culture. A staff of twentysomethings puts together the monthly glossy out of the American Laundry Building in Norwood - deflating the notion that national, cutting-edge cultural coverage can't originate in Cincinnati. Strength Magazine, 5050 Section Ave., Norwood, 531-0202.

Best Underground Media Entrepreneurs: Cincinnati's small but talented pool of comic book artists have made an impression on the national scene. Among the standouts are Steve Harmon (his title: Maiden Hell), Josh Blaylock (Lil Nasty) and David Mack, who has optioned rights for a film version of his comic, Kabuki, for which he'll write the screenplay, and who was hired by Marvel Comics to write issues of its Daredevil title.

Best Unintentional Homoerotic Imagery in Advertising: LaRosa's recent campaign. It was really a toss-up in this category. The Furniture Fair ads with Anthony Munoz coddling and baby-talkin' to the chain's owner - who is sporting a big teddy bear costume, by the way - was the easy choice about nine months ago. But then came LaRosa's "What Do You Feel Like?" campaign, with its drawing of a quartet of embracing, way-too-happy boys celebrating "a big win!" with thought bubbles over their heads depicting calzones, trophies and extra-large, er, pizzas.

Best Friend to Victims, As Long as the Victim Works There: The Enquirer and its coverage of a single food poisoning. The daily ran a series of front-page and Metro front stories taking the city health department to task for not bringing criminal charges against the restaurant. The Enquirer even took the unusual step of actually identifying the restaurant, Washington Platform, on the front page. Little attention was paid that this wasn't a case of e coli or sloppy kitchen practices; the patron was eating raw oysters, which conventional wisdom holds is a risky practice. That the oyster victim himself was a top Enquirer executive, Tom Woeste, had nothing to do with this relentless coverage and the string of published glowing tributes by Enquirer colleagues, however. No, not a chance. Really.

Best Reason to Think You Don't Need a News Director After All: At Channel 19, which posted a ratings record in the month it operated between news directors. Karla Stanley left at the first of the year after five years at the station; replacement Patrick Casey took over in February. During those rudderless five weeks, the newsroom staff managed the best ever ratings for the Ten O'Clock News (a 9.1 rating and 14 share), beating Channel 5 and holding just a tenth of a point behind Channel 9. Like we said, who needs a news director?

Best Reason to Give WLW a Try Even If You've Given up on It: Ric Robinson, the new full-time host who took over the 12:30-2 p.m. slot after Mike McConnell's daily show got trimmed down. Robinson seems, on first listen anyhow, to have a fresher approach and view than his right-wing WLW (700 AM) cohorts. Robinson is married to Sheila Gray, the Channel 19 morning news anchor, which shows good taste in women, too.

Best Reason to Not Try a Different Kind of Talk Radio: In the recent tweak of its music format and schedule, WNKU (89.7 FM) put on hold its weekly Speaking Frankly talk show. Hosted by News Director Maryanne Zeleznik, the show tackled controversial topics like public education, politics, stadium building and urban redevelopment without yelling or name-calling. Here's hoping listeners demand its return.

Best Reason to Try a Different Kind of Talk Radio: Lincoln Ware's daily morning show on WCIN (1480 AM), the station that's been the voice of Cincinnati's black community since 1953. After the station went through bankruptcy a few years ago, Ware has almost single-handedly kept it relevant for listeners.

Best Reason Not to Trust Radio: WEBN's "local contest" promoting all sorts of sports trips (to the World Series, Summer Olympics, etc.) as prizes. What WEBN (102.7 FM) didn't tell you: Some 50 other Clear Channel stations in 23 states also were in the mix. DJs dutifully read the winner's name each day and thanked the lucky winners "for listening to the Dawn Patrol." They weren't. Not one Cincinnati listener won in this national contest.

Best Reason for a Food Editor to Edit, Not Write: Chuck "Roast" Martin's lengthy two-page diatribe on how to construct the best BLT sandwich. His seasoned advice, taking up much of The Enquirer's food front one Sunday as well as an inside page of newsprint, essentially boiled down to this: Use fresh bread, mayo, bacon, lettuce and tomato. Alert the Pulitzer board!

Best Job Security: Anchorman Charlie Luken finally getting his tush back into the Mayor's chair. Channel 5 was a revolving door anyhow (Luken had worked for three owners and four news directors in the relatively short time in the anchor chair), and becoming the top city council vote-getter in November surely landed him a better gig than the job found by the last Channel 5 anchor/former mayor, Jerry Springer.

Best Outrageous TV Promo: Those "sweeps week" cash giveaways, where channels 12 and 9 offered a half million in cash between them to get people to watch their newscast. Sweepstakes? Cash giveaways? Whatever happened to just airing a better newscast? OK, let's put it in terms that TV journalists can understand: Do you know how much hairspray the newsroom could order for a half million dollars?

Best Hope for Local TV News: The hiring of A. Rabun Matthews as station manager and Ken Jobe as news director at Channel 5. Matthews won a national Scripps Howard award for investigative reporting. Former Channel 9 producer Jobe was part of the famed I-Team. Channel 5, which hasn't won its 11 p.m. ratings slot in a decade, is a sad imitation of a newsroom and is in desperate need of a makeover. Maybe these two guys are the charm.

Best Late Show by a Public TV Station: Channel 48, which relegated the national PBS show Media Matters - which normally airs everywhere in the primetime 10 p.m. slot on a national PBS feed - to the 11:30 p.m. graveyard on the evening the program happened to examine The Enquirer's Chiquita debacle. Wouldn't you think a public television station would consider a major local news story, covered by a national newsmagazine, worthy of prime time attention in Cincinnati?

Best TV Personality in the Wee Hours: Rob Williams, co-host of Fox 19 in the Morning, almost makes you want to get up early on weekdays to watch him. He's just a cool guy with an easy-going demeanor who obviously enjoys cluing viewers into what's happening in Cincinnati.

Best Essence of Cincinnati: In October, CityBeat ran its "That's Soooo Cincinnati" contest for readers to offer their suggestions about what makes this town unique and special. The winning entry (by Jim Waldfogle of Norwood): "Being so conservative that you think The Cincinnati Enquirer is liberal."

Best Rail Birds: DCI transportation consultant John Schneider, City Councilman Todd Portune and his erstwhile county commission opponent Marilyn Hyland have been pushing, in independent efforts, the benefits of mass transit passenger rail for Greater Cincinnati. Schneider has been honchoing the proposed I-71 light rail system, particularly within the city of Cincinnati, prodding engineers to consider a tunnel under Mount Auburn, a downtown alignment that includes the under-construction Second Street and a spur to Newport. Portune and Hyland have proposed commuter rail that runs through downtown to both western and eastern suburbs. Doubters include Cincinnati's U.S. Congressmen and Hamilton County officials, but they're being lobbied to help with funding.

Best Waste of Taxpayer Money (Political Division): The criminal investigation surrounding the theft of internal Chiquita voice mails by an Enquirer reporter finally wrapped up last year. After Hamilton County taxpayers spent more than $500,000 on a special prosecutor - hired because the county prosecutor received campaign contributions from Carl Lindner, who runs Chiquita - only two people were prosecuted, and they both ended up with plea-bargained sentences of probation. Just before receiving their respective sentences, ex-reporter Michael Gallagher and ex-Chiquita attorney George Ventura, not coincidentally, settled their private affairs with Chiquita by agreeing not to ever again discuss in public their original charges against the multinational banana producer. The genie, amazingly, was put back in the bottle for good.

Best Waste of Taxpayer Money (Stadium Division): What can we say here that hasn't already been said blasting Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus, Commissioner Tom Neyer Jr. and County Administrator David Krings for their shoddy oversight of the Bengals stadium construction? In the four years since county voters passed a sales tax hike to pay for two new stadiums, overall costs have risen from $544 million to $977 million. More telling, costs for the core projects (a new Bengals stadium and a new Reds stadium) have risen from $330 million to $612 million - a whopping 85 percent! And ground hasn't even been broken for the baseball park. Of course, there's nothing "best" about this scandal, since taxpayers literally are paying for their elected officials' mistakes.

Best Fresh Face: Alicia Reece, who came out of nowhere to win a Cincinnati City Council seat last fall. An example to young people who feel shut out of the political process, she studies up on the issues and gets involved. When she flashes her winning smile, it's evident that not everyone on council is a stick in the mud.

Best No Show: When the Gannett Foundation's Newseum's BusCapade, the world's first traveling interactive museum of news ethics and practices, visited town last fall, plenty of former Enquirer types (including former publisher Bill Keating) were on hand with former Gannett CEO Al Neuharth for the opening. We didn't see a soul from the current regime of The Enquirer, even though it's owned by Gannett. What a surprise. The exhibit included a video dissing the current Enquirer staff over its Chiquita debacle.