journalism

All around the country reporters are tapping out reports that toll agencies (and other highway operators) are "bracing" for a surge of holiday traffic. This is a melodramatic way of saying that the tollers are preparing for extra traffic.

But where's the news?

There's nothing worse for a reporter expected to report than there being nothing of interest to report yet. The 'stage setter' piece is expected but the setting of the stage is just boring.The leaden cliches roll from bored minds. Thus before Hurricane Ike reporter after reporter said that Houston was "bracing for" the onset of the storm. Imagine all that bracing action, whatever bracing is!

Or else they said everyone was "poised" – another of those terms that sounds earnest in the saying but means little.

Any true journalist has to love the story in the Wall Street Journal editorial (WSJ 2007-06-06 pA18) of a former editor Vermont Royster visiting the White House in the early 1960s and being thanked by President Kennedy for "your support of our free trade agenda," and Royster's retort: "Young man, the Wall Street Journal was supporting free trade before you were born."

 The prefatory "Young man" is just right.