What will be in the news next year?

October 22, 2010 4:14 AM

Certain news stories are predictable in advance-- because they cover stories that happen every year (like the Oscars or the Super Bowl); or because they cover events you can see coming a long time away (like the 500th birthday of some historical personage.) Is there any comprehensive list of Things That Will Probably Be In The News Next Year? I'm looking for something like this weekly preview from CNN, but over a longer timescale.
posted by yankeefog to media & arts (15 answers total)

Wikipedia's 2011 page has a list of Predicted & Scheduled Events. There are Wiki articles for each year in the near future but at some point it moves to decades (e.g. 2090s) and then millennia (31st century).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:21 AM on October 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

Er, I mean centuries not millennia.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:21 AM on October 22, 2010

It does go to millennia after the year 4000 though.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:22 AM on October 22, 2010

You could research (or at least confirm) cyclic events with Google Trends.

For example, search for Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Grammies, Emmies, Oscars, world series, or swallows capistrano and you'll get nice predictable annual spikes.
posted by pracowity at 4:45 AM on October 22, 2010

EndsOfInvention: Thanks! That's exactly what I'm looking for. It does seem a bit sparse, though, so if anybody has any additional sources, please do suggest them.

Pracowity: That's an ingenious idea, but, alas, I'm really looking to discover events (or at least remind myself of them), rather than confirm them. Thanks, though!
posted by yankeefog at 4:51 AM on October 22, 2010

Drew Curtis over at Fark.com writes about a similar phenomenon, whereby you'll hear the same weird news stories or the back-to-school stories or other yearly stories around the same time every year. There are plenty more over there, too.
posted by Grither at 5:04 AM on October 22, 2010

Not entirely helpful, but I used to have a list like this when I worked as a news journalist, where for a story with a possible follow-up I would make a note in a diary for threw months/six months/a year out, and come back to it. If you know anyone who works as a journalist, they should be able to give you a pretty good idea of what's coming up over the next year, at least in their area of expertise.
posted by StephenF at 6:11 AM on October 22, 2010

HitFix has movies and entertainment events by month.

IMDB has movie releases by upcoming dates.
posted by GaelFC at 12:26 PM on October 22, 2010

By the way, what you are looking for is known in the news industry as an "evergreen," which Slate defined thusly:

Evergreen: An article that could run at any time. There are two types of evergreens: 1) an article without a direct tie-in to the day's news (e.g., "Traffic on the Rise in Metro Area"); and 2) a story that recurs regularly (e.g., "Elderly Threatened by Record Heat").

This phrase may help you search for more examples.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:29 PM on October 22, 2010

The Economist runs an annual feature with predictions for the next year which always hits this site's front page around December. It's a mix of actual scheduled events and informed speculation.
posted by miyabo at 8:59 PM on October 23, 2010

Thanks, everybody!
posted by yankeefog at 1:28 AM on October 25, 2010

By the way, StephenF's suggestion got me thinking, and I realized I could combine various publicly available calendar subscriptions to make my own electronic schedule of predictable events. There are calendars for film releases, celebrity birthdays, etc. It's not perfect -- there's a lot of stuff missing -- but combined with the other suggestions, it lets me piece together what I need.
posted by yankeefog at 2:06 AM on October 25, 2010

Housing market rebounds, families regain sense of faith and security
posted by daveg02 at 8:00 AM on November 18, 2010

One more resource I've found since posting the question: About.com's list of monthly events.
posted by yankeefog at 3:33 AM on November 19, 2010

It's been a few months since I posted this question, but I've finally found exactly what I'm looking for:

Chase's Calendar of Events.

For any given day in 2011, it tells you what anniversaries, religious holidays, sporting events, etc, are expected to occur. It also tells you about the various weekly and monthly events ("National Pomegranate Month," "National Patient Accessibility Week," etc.).

If you don't want to spent the $60 bucks for Chase's, it turns out that Answers.com has all the Chase's information online; just go there and type in a date. Here, for example, is their entry for March 26. I decided it was helpful to have all the info in physical form, so I went ahead and bought a hard copy of Chase's, but your mileage may vary.
posted by yankeefog at 2:19 AM on March 26, 2011