Jim: I think I know where Marshall is going to go with his pick, and so I’ll try not to take it personally. But I’ll go in a different area…

The year’s most over-reported story is Al Gore and his documentary. There’s talk he may be Time’s Man of the Year, even though “An Inconvenient Truth” was released last year; he just spent this year accepting awards. And let’s face it, the film is perfect for stirring the hearts of global elites - the earth is dying, corporations are to blame, we need a bigger government to regulate and restrict the actions of people. Giving us more power will help cute polar bears.

The irony is that I could find common ground with these folks; I want a clean environment and have a soft spot for certain parts of the green agenda - wetlands preservation, open spaces, endangered species, mixed-use development. But because of Al Gore, the cause has now been hijacked into an effort to establish a global aristocracy that will fly around on private jets, live in giant mansions, drive to global warming hearings in SUVs, etc., and then lecture the rest of us on how many squares of toilet paper to use.

Marshall: Jim’s is a worthy choice. Gore’s movie, it turns out, is rife with inaccuracies. Though I will say that to the extent it raised awareness of global warming and change a few folks’ behavior along the way, I don’t mind the attention quite as much as Jim does.

For my choice as the Most Over-Reported Story of 2007, I select the 2008 presidential campaign. The campaign started way to early, and the press bought it hook, line and sinker. We saw full, daily coverage of the campaign going strong last spring. Obama and Thompson both saw their media coverage — both in terms of volume and positive sentiment — peak last in early summer. Check the calendar: That’s 18 months before the election.

Now, I understand that the process of selecting delegates is starting extra early this year. Iowans will caucus just hours after the last New Years fireworks have exploded. But even with a January caucus, the level of media attention 8 or 9 months out from the first caucuses was excessive. It’s no wonder that voters have campaign fatigue already. As a result, too much of the coverage has been shallow, trite or boring.

As a consequence of the early caucuses and primaries, we’re now facing a period of a general election campaign lasting more than half a year. That’s too long and too much. Not even the most interested observer can — or for that matter, should — stay focused on the campaign for that long.

For the media, that means too much focus on insignificant stories that have no real impact on, well, anything. That’s exactly what happened in 2007, and it’s precisely that I’m likely to be naming the same winner in this category next year.