In the world of the microscopic news cycle, a year is a mighty long time. Think “dog years” on steroids. Over the course of the past year, in thousands (around 7,500 ) of articles and millions (between 3 and 4 million) of words, Mediaite has covered the ups and downs of that whizzing, ricocheting media world. In case you lost track in that sea of information, we’ve compiled a list of 2011 Media Winners and Losers that we hope will be the start  of a conversation, not the end of one. Here, in no particular order, are Mediaite’s 2011 Media Winners and Losers.

On Sunday, This Week host Christiane Amanpour bid her audience farewell during her final broadcast as anchor, and wished George Stephanopoulos the best of luck when he takes over for her in the coming year. “It’s been an enormous privilege to anchor this prestigious program,” Amanpour said.

ABC’s This Week began the first in a series of big debates that will continue throughout the next year. Today’s topic was whether government is too big or not, with two advocates on each side arguing for each position, and naturally the conversation made its way to drug legalization. In quite a surreal moment, Barney Frank asked George Will his position on marijuana and if it should be legalized.

On Tuesday, ABC announced Christiane Amanpour would no longer be hosting This Week — she would stay on as a global affairs anchor, while returning to CNN to host a show on CNN International. While Amanpour seemed overjoyed (“This role is groundbreaking, bold and very different,” Amanpour said. “I am thrilled and honored”), ABC now had a role to fill. So they turned to the past, and announced Amanpour’s replacement: George Stephanopoulos.

Longtime host George Stephanopoulos is set to return to ABC’s This Week early next year with the news that current host Christiane Amanpour is set to return to CNN for a weekday show, and remaining with ABC for specials.

With several days of reporting and, today, a final official story on the departure of host Christiane Amanpour from ABC’s This Week (but not from the network entirely), the host herself has made the news official, and elaborated on her roles both for ABC and her weekly CNN International program– as well as CNN President Jim Walton responding to the news of her return.

On Friday, the New York Post‘s Page Six column suggested that Christiane Amanpour was about to step down as host of This Week. The column reported that Amanpour would return to CNN, the network she left last year to join ABC.

When Newt Gingrich suggested during a Republican debate in October that Congressman Barney Frank be jailed for his role in the financial crisis, it clearly touched a nerve, as Frank has made multiple media appearances in the past few weeks going after Gingrich and dismissing the idea he is a serious candidate for the presidency. On This Week today, Frank continued piling on the former Speaker, saying he would make a weak candidate against President Obama in next year’s election.

When talking about the rise of Newt Gingrich in current Republican politics, one subject that does not get brought up as much as it used to is his three marriages and his infidelity to his first two wives. Being one of the more family values-oriented candidates in the presidential race, Rick Santorum was asked on This Week today if voters should factor in Gingrich’s past indiscretions in their current judgments of his ability to be president.

Now that Herman Cain is out of the Republican presidential race, we have officially kicked off the phase where everyone reflects on the ups and downs of his campaign. And on This Week today, George Will wasted no time in calling the ex-candidate “disrespectful” and a “charlatan” for using his candidacy to promote his book and not be a serious candidate bringing ideas to the table like everyone else.

With Newt Gingrich nabbing a major endorsement in New Hampshire this morning, the panel on This Week assessed his strengths and chances of making it through to the nomination with a record like his. While agreeing that he was, among other things, “undisciplined,” they noted his comments on immigration could be a positive in the general, with Michael Gerson labeling yet another “scandal of sanity” in the GOP.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has no faith in the Tea Party’s ability to produce a president. This he noted today in a discussion with Christiane Amanpour on This Week, where he lamented the “very tense” tone currently in Washington and attributed some of that to the obstinacy of the Tea Party.

George Will really doesn’t like Newt Gingrich. On the This Week round table this morning, Will began his comments on Gingrich, now a frontrunner, by stating that his candidate “embodies everything disagreeable about modern Washington,” going on to laugh at the idea that Gingrich was hired by Freddie Mac as a “historian,” and, as a final blow, speaking more glowingly of even Rep. Ron Paul than of Gingrich.

Christiane Amanpour asked George Will about Rick Perry‘s “very bad week” on This Week today, but before discussing the Texas governor’s presidential campaign, Will disclosed that his wife Mari Maseng joined the Perry campaign last week, making her focus campaign messaging and debate preparation. Will’s wife has worked previously as communications directors to both Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole. In the past few weeks, Will has written several columns in the Washington Post, one of which was highly critical of Mitt Romney, one of Perry’s chief rivals in the field.

Rick Perry‘s poor debate performances have not just hurt his public image, they’re starting to hurt his campaign’s ability to raise money. An anonymous source within the Republican party explained several days ago that Perry’s campaign fundraising “has ground to a halt,” even before his cringeworthy forgetfulness at last Wednesday’s CNBC debate. ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Jonathan Karl said as much on This Week earlier today, while admitting Perry’s performance was much improved during last night’s CBS debate.

One of the subplots to last week’s Herman Cain Bad-Press-A-Palooza (bad press that seems to have helped him) was his supposed gaffe in an interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff on Monday night’s Newshour. The clip has widely been reported as demonstrating that Cain did not know that China has had nuclear weapons since 1964, and that he thinks they still don’t. For a week now, I’ve been waiting for someone to point out that Cain indicated no such thing.

On This Week today, Speaker of the House John Boehner admitted his personal and professional relationship with President Obama has gotten “frosty” recently, but both sides have been doing their best to find common ground and work together on the important issues. Christiane Amanpour asked Boehner to weigh in on the current Republican presidential field, but the Speaker did not give his support to anyone in particular and promised he would throw his weight behind the eventual nominee.

The panel on This Week today came to the same consensus on Herman Cain: that he is not exactly a serious candidate, but rather this week’s replacement for the now second-tier candidate Mitt Romney. Christiane Amanpour pointed to a recent poll that found Cain ahead of Romney in Iowa, but George Will threw cold water on Cain’s prospects, saying that the candidate has a very unlikely chance of coming close to the nomination. Will advised to not speculate too much on the primary race, as the Iowa caucus is months away.

Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann appeared on ABC’s This Week today, and Christiane Amanpour put Bachmann on the defensive when she asked the candidate if her non-interventionist Libya position would mean she would have been okay with “hundreds of thousands of dead civilians” in the streets of Libya and Moammar Gadhafi still in power.

What a difference a week makes. Following his rocket ride to the top of the GOP presidential field, and a Bloomberg/Washington Post debate performance that made a star of his “9-9-9 plan,” former pizza mogul Herman Cain has rapidly become a media punchline. That arc culminated Sunday morning when This Week host Christiane Amanpour opened her interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by asking “Are you in Herman Cain’s famously designated ‘Beki-beki-beki-bekistan?’”

George Will credited Occupy Wall Street for adopting the idea of debt repudiation, a theory which has been touted by some economists, which he he fully expects to be embraced by the mainstream soon enough. Christiane Amanpour brought up concerns by some business leaders about the Obama administration’s economic policies.

It started as just a minor “gotcha” moment–a YouTube clip of an Occupy Wall Street protester criticizing Fox News coverage of the movement to Griff Jenkins popped up on the Internet, as these things tend to do. It was later discovered that the protester was Jesse LaGreca, a Daily Kos blogger. On Sunday, LaGreca appeared on ABC’s This Week to talk about the protests, and–agree with his point of view or not–he came across as well-spoken, smart, and level-headed.

On This Week today, Christiane Amanpour and the panel discussed the issue of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and whether it would be an issue for him to deal with in the Republican race for the presidency heading into primary season, or if he had too many other political problems to deal with to prioritize his personal faith. Romney’s faith was brought into the limelight over the weekend due to controversial statements made by pastor Robert Jeffries.

In an exclusive interview on This Week today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the minor controversy between Massachusetts senator Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren over what can only be described as “No-Clothes-Gate,” and criticized the senator for being “clueless” about how he may have disrespected Warren with his commends.

Sparks flew on the set of The View on Monday, as the topic of Herman Cain‘s uncensored use of the name “N*ggerhead” in denouncing Texas Gov. Rick Perry inspired one reaction when Whoopi Goldberg quoted him, and quite another when Barbara Walters did. Goldberg seemed to applaud Cain’s choice, and argue against the euphemistic use of “the n-word,” but when Walters quoted Cain (again, uncensored), co-host Sherri Shepherd told Walters, “”I didn’t like the way you said it.”