For the Georgia Straight’s 18th annual Best of Vancouver issue, our editorial team has spent months on the lookout for good deeds, weird urban details, and various howlers to highlight. Here’s our contributors’ picks for Best of Vancouver 2013.

Best spectator sport in the new, downsized media age

Searching for the typos and numerous other mistakes that find their way onto the pages of local and national daily newspapers after all the layoffs and buyouts of recent years stripped the publications of their star writers and editors. No fair scanning these pages, though. We were really busy this week.

Best reason to stand up in support of Insite

Shortly after Glee star Cory Monteith was found dead of a drug overdose in a Vancouver hotel room, the Calgary Herald ran a commentary suggesting that the existence of Insite, the city’s supervised injection facility, “may have helped kill” the 31-year-old actor. Faster than you could tweet about it, seemingly all of Vancouver rallied around Insite as an unlikely point of pride. The collective backlash led the Herald to amend the online text of its article, and Insite’s Liz Evans was given space in the paper, which she filled with a blistering takedown of the original commentary. Don’t mess with Insite, the Calgary Herald learned. (Now, if only Stephen Harper would get the same message.)

Best torpedoing of an employer in the media biz

CKNW talk-show host David Pratt recently skedaddled over to TEAM 1040 after his employer announced that it wasn’t renewing late-night sports talk-show host Dan Russell’s contract. CKNW may have felt that Russell was expendable because Pratt was already including plenty of sports interviews on his early evening program. But after Russell was publicly iced, Pratt decided to return to his old stomping ground at TEAM 1040, leaving CKNW without a marquee sportscaster. As Pratt likes to say on the air: “Hasta la vista, baby!”

Best media torpedoing of an employer in Canada

CBC’s Kathy Tomlinson exposed how the Royal Bank had laid off employees and filled those positions with temporary foreign workers. Ouch!

Best smirk before launching into the news

CBC local anchor Miyoung Lee often looks like she’s suppressing a big smile as she reads the headlines to start the late-night newscast. Either that or she’s just thrilled to be on television.