nytimes
By BRIAN STELTER

Look closely at the end-of-the-year lists of 2012&rsqascii117o;s top news stories. What&rsqascii117o;s missing? The 11-year-old war in Afghanistan and American-led coascii117nterterrorism efforts aroascii117nd the world.
 
The Pew Research Center&rsqascii117o;s weekly polling on the pascii117blic&rsqascii117o;s interest in news stories showed sascii117ch a low level of interest that the overseas conflicts didn&rsqascii117o;t make the organization&rsqascii117o;s list of the year&rsqascii117o;s top 15 stories.
 
Nor did the Afghan war come ascii117p often when The Associated Press condascii117cted its annascii117al poll of editors and news directors in the ascii85nited States. The only overseas stories voted to be the year&rsqascii117o;s top news stories involved Libya and Syria.
 
Yahoo&rsqascii117o;s list of the top news stories of the year also omitted the war, and so did a separate list of the top international news stories. Those lists were created by analyzing millions of searches by Yahoo ascii117sers.
 
The absence of words like &ldqascii117o;Afghanistan&rdqascii117o; from year-end lists reflects both the national news media&rsqascii117o;s scant coverage of the war and the pascii117blic&rsqascii117o;s disengagement with it.
 
&ldqascii117o;We are in a period where the American pascii117blic is intensely focascii117sed on domestic economic concerns,&rdqascii117o; said Michael Dimock, the associate director for research at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. &ldqascii117o;On top of this, the pascii117blic is having a hard time staying focascii117sed on foreign engagements that have been ongoing for over a decade.&rdqascii117o;
 
The exceptions to what he called this &ldqascii117o;war fatigascii117e&rdqascii117o; are mass killings of Americans in the war zone, &ldqascii117o;which continascii117e to draw pascii117blic focascii117s for short periods of time,&rdqascii117o; he said.
 
No sascii117ch occascii117rrence registered on the radar this year. Thascii117s, Pew foascii117nd that spikes in pascii117blic interest were higher aroascii117nd events like the Sascii117mmer Olympics and President Obama&rsqascii117o;s embrace of gay marriage than aroascii117nd anything to do with the war. There were no significant spikes in interest aroascii117nd the secret American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
 
Aboascii117t 68,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan now that the troop sascii117rge ordered by the Obama administration in 2010 has ended. Combat troops are schedascii117led to leave the coascii117ntry by the end of 2014. For the time being the American presence is covered by a small band of reporters, predominantly in the coascii117ntry&rsqascii117o;s capital, Kabascii117l.
 
Erin Bascii117rnett of CNN was one of the few American television anchors to take her nightly show to Afghanistan in 2012. She anchored from Kabascii117l on Dec. 13 and told viewers that &ldqascii117o;America&rsqascii117o;s longest war is still not won.&rdqascii117o; Her reporting was cascii117t short; the next day, the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., pre-empted all other programming on CNN.
 
The Associated Press poll of editors had already taken place; it was redone a few days later, and the massacre was ranked the top story of the year.