Today Crikey examines the stories buried under the sandcastle of summer fiction and personal anecdote pieces that dominate the newspapers this time of year.

The tradition of killing stories by releasing them over Christmas is as integral to a PR flak’s summer as zinc cream and BBQ snags – take Ziggy Switkowski’s nuclear report. As our climate change correspondent Ian McHugh asks today, having chosen a task force membership that was highly likely to deliver the answer the PM was looking for, why let the final report of the government’s Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy Task Force sink in the news story Bermuda triangle of the Christmas to New Year gap?

Other sneaky stories that you may have missed include John Howard deregistering 19 political parties in December, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) shovelling out four announcements including a new fee gouge, and James Packer quietly shuffling his shareholdings in PBL between several of his private companies.

And from inside the Crikey bunker, Misha Ketchell has left us. He was a dedicated editor of Crikey for two years and now he’s gone off with a gleam in his eye to use his bulldogging skills elsewhere and we’ll miss him. Thanks Misha.