This was the first year I worked professionally in the news biz — and while I’ve been told every year is a big news year, I felt this year was especially crazy. My taste in news generally runs local, so I was excited to see a few scandalous local politicians, some terrible decisions by Mayor Bloomberg, and a special election in my time working in a newsroom. These aren’t ranked so much in importance, but in my delight in reading about them. So, before that ball drops, here are my favorite newsmakers of 2011:

Cathie Black. It was hard to even stay mad at Mayor Bloomberg’s selection of the ex-magazine editor who had probably only seen Queens from an airport tarmac. It took only weeks for this questionable decision to turn Jay-Leno-in-primetime bad — and then all that shit just kept rolling downhill, culminating in her early-morning firing. In 2010 she asked the city to give her a chance. ”Don’t judge someone that you have never even met,” she said in an interview. She toured a school in each borough in early January, saying that she was excited to meet the students (who knew there were so many black ones!, she thought!) It didn’t take long for her to roll her eyes and yell back at meetings with parents. At least Joel Klein had the decency to ignore parents and focus on Brickbreaker. In mid-January she made a bad birth control joke at a meeting to address overcrowded schools in Manhattan. In February, she said she “couldn’t really tell” how teacher layoffs would hurt schools. What the fuck was she doing in any public office? Maybe those emails will provide some clarity (if they’re ever released from the Chamber of Secrets.)