This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When it starts snowing, we here in The Tribune newsroom start looking back. We begin preparing retrospectives reviewing 12 months of news, and debating our choice for Utahn of the Year.

That's where you come in. In your opinion, who was the newsmaker with the most impact in 2014? We want to hear from you in coming days and weeks.

Last year top editors at The Tribune chose Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. At the time, he was a key player in two of the biggest stories of 2013, the prosecution of former state attorneys general John Swallow and Mark Shurtleff, and the investigation into the shooting of Danielle Willard by West Valley City detectives. We were right about one thing in making that choice: Those stories continued to develop and were big news in 2014.

We've been naming a Utahn of the Year since 1997. Karl Malone, who won the first of his two most-valuable-player NBA awards that year, was our inaugural choice. Since then we've singled out such individuals as Elizabeth Smart, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and the late LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley. We've also recognized groups, such as the first responders to the Trolley Square shooting rampage and the Crandall Canyon mine disaster, and the Utahns who lost their lives in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, who should it be this year? The Swallow/Shurtleff saga continues to make headlines, and will for some time to come. Mia Love is the first black woman from the Republican Party elected to Congress. Gay marriage was on, off, and on again, so what about the plaintiffs, attorneys and couples at the center of the history-making debate?

It was a year of confrontation between the federal government and Utahns wanting control of public lands. Cliven Bundy isn't a Utahn, so he's out of contention. But he had plenty of support from many Utahns, so what about them? Or what about the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service workers caught in the crossfire?

Gov. Gary Herbert is front and center on many issues, including two that are among the most important to Utahns – air quality and health care — and has advanced initiatives on both. Is this his year?

Every time we do this, part of the discussion is whether or not we consider someone whose actions could be considered more negative than positive. An extreme example: In 1938, Time magazine named Adolf Hitler its Man of the Year. So far, we've leaned toward the positive, although I'm sure there are those who would disagree when thinking of some of our choices. Where do you come down on considering impact, good or bad?

Why do this exercise at the end of every year? A journalist's DNA includes the need to capsulize and sum up — to be able to say "this event, or series of events, will be what we remember when we think of 2014." When looking back years from now, these are the things that happened that really mattered, and this person, or these people, were the central players.

So what, and who, will we remember when we think of 2014? Send us your nominees. Early in December, we'll post an online poll. Your nominations and votes will inform our decision, and when we announce our choice we will include our readers' choices as well.

Thanks in advance.

Terry Orme is The Tribune's editor and publisher. Reach him at orme@sltrib.com. —

Nominate a Utahn of the Year

I Email nominees to utahnoftheyear@sltrib.com, or mail them to Utahn of the Year, The Salt Lake Tribune, 90 S. 400 West, Ste. 700, Salt Lake City, UT 84101.