A little pizzazz can make year-end roundups stand out

Oooh, this one is just too irresistible.

Fortune’s list-making elves are out today with their 2009 roster of Dumbest Moments in Business.

The line-up includes 21 incidents ranging from CEOs with foot-in-mouth to DirectTV’s eerie ads featuring the reanimation of the late comedian Chris Farley.

Not all the items on the list really fit the bill – some, like Chrysler’s closing of dealerships, are just regrettable necessities.

Nevertheless, this is a tasty premise on which to base a local year-end business feature.

You can attack it in so many ways. Poll your peers in the newsroom. Survey local consultants, academics and marketing gurus. If you have time, assemble a panel comprised of all of the above, plus a few random readers thrown in for good measure, and spend a few hours over coffee and doughnuts recalling 2009.

Either way, look for your area’s advertising gaffes, the management missteps, the image-breakers and foibles of individual movers and shakers.

You’ll probably end up with a list that’s part comedy and part tragedy. That’s OK. Your readers can relate as much to an ill-fated ad campaign as they can to a blown business pitch that left a local plant or office complex idle.

This makes for a neat slide show, interactive pop-up graphic or other fun treatment – but I found Forbes’ slide-show only layout annoying and would’ve preferred the option to read the list in prose, too, so do both.

Throw in an interactive feature like an audience poll, comments section or write-in slot where readers can nominate their own dumbos of 2009 and you’ve got a highly clickable feature with decent shelf life.

Another approach: Wish List 2010. It’s not uncommon for news organizations to do a coming-year outlook, but they tend to be somewhat officious, abstract and top-down.

If you choose to look into the crystal ball, take a new tack: Ask economists, analysts, business leaders, entrepreneurs, workers and development officials what’s on their dreamscape for the coming year. Keep it realistic but encourage folks to think beyond the numbers and suggest creative solutions as your area tackles the hoped-for Recovery of 2010.

As always, let readers weigh in, too. Often the best ideas come from front lines.
One last idea: I’ve mentioned this before but if you haven’t yet, try to get your colleagues’ buy-in for a long-term, standing economic recovery feature.

Whether you follow a local employer’s turnaround attempts, a new entrepreneur’s trial and error, a factory worker retraining as a nurse or a family trying to recover from foreclosure, these longitudinal packages are gripping and will help you illustrate the nuts and bolts of the recession hangover.

You still have a few weeks left to design, organize and launch your project.