The Columnist Of The Year Curse

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The Columnist Of The Year Curse

By Jack Lepiarz
Nov. 27, 2006

It's that time of year again. Time to think about who was the most "useless" columnist of the year. During my time here, I've seen two "Columnist of the Year" winners, Eric Schomburg and Dennis L. Siluk. The thing is, neither of those two have submitted anything in over nine months (in Schomburg's case, over a year). This has me thinking--could the "Columnist of the Year" slot be cursed?

On December 29th, 2004, Eric Schomburg won UK columnist of the year. On that same day, he wrote an article saying, "It is a true honor to be UK's columnist of the year, and I hope to bring more columns to this great news organization. Thank you."

After that statement, Schomburg submitted about 25 more articles to the site before he slowed down. He wrote only two articles in June, and then abruptly stopped in September of 2005. Since then, there have been no updates from Eric Schomburg.

Last year, on December 5th, Dennis L. Siluk won best columnist of the year. In his article, "A Letter: It's a Nice Xmas Gift," Siluk wrote, "All in all, being selected as "Columnist of the Year," is a nice Christmas gift; and to those with happy hearts, thanks." He wrote two more articles and hasn't submitted anything since. His last article was on December 12th.

Now, both Schomburg and Siluk both received their fair share of flak after winning the awards, so it's quite possible that they decided to leave simply because they were fed up with the confrontational atmosphere of Useless-Knowledge.com. I can't say. What's also interesting, is that the two runner-ups last year, Stan Grimes and Judy Ramsook, have also ceased writing for UK. The 2nd place winner in 2004, Ken Hughes, has also stopped writing for UK--at least on a regular basis (he submitted a piece not too long ago).

So, of the five columnist winners and runner-ups, none of those five are still regular columnists for the site. Is it a curse or simply a disdain for the UK atmosphere? Have they moved onto bigger and better things? Or maybe they said, "I'm the columnist of the year, now seems like a good time to retire from UK." I can't say. Maybe there's a secret police that goes around eliminating all columnist winners (Okay, that might be a little farfetched). I wonder, though, how long we'll continue to see this year's winner writing for UK.

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About the author: Jack Lepiarz is an 18-year-old college student at Emerson College in Boston. He also co-hosts the Katherine and Jack Show on UthTV.com and has been performing various circus talents for the past several years. Though often described as stubborn and egotistical, he tries to keep an open mind and treat others the way he would like to be treated.

Email: Jackwuzhere42@aol.com

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