23 October—I met a black bear in the meadow this morning, not far from the house. We looked each other in the eye, turned around, and went about our business. The bear sauntered into the woods and I went to my newly sprouted Spanish radishes. I don’t know how the bear felt, but I was delighted at the brief encounter.

🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️

News stories are customarily written in what’s known as the inverted pyramid style: Lead (often a provocative hook to grab attention); body (elements to support the lead: who, what, when, where, why); tail (everything else, other nice but not vital details). It means putting the most fundamental information at the top, the first paragraph (the opening sentence, if possible), and then organizing the remaining facts from most important to least important.

The inverted pyramid lets readers get the most important information first and then work their way down to minutiae. If they get that far, that is. Because one purpose of the inverted pyramid is to accommodate people who don’t read a whole story or just skim it.

The inverted pyramid also allows editors to cut stories from the tail end without losing the essential facts.

So a news story in yesterday’s Republican-American from the Associated Press was headlined “Video captures efforts to save lives after deadly collapse of dock walkway.” No byline, but a dateline indicating only location, as is the practice these days.

The hook: “SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The metal gangway where dozens of people waited to board a ferry boat made a loud, creaking noise before snapping in the middle amid panicked cries from those sent plunging into the water. Some clung desperately to the railing, while others began to float away with the tidal current.

“‘There was no time for anyone to get off,’ said Icy White, who watched from about 30 feet away at the ferry dock on Sapelo Island. ‘It took seconds’.”

Good hook. For a novel, perhaps. Like the classic “It was a dark and stormy night” from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford.

Since The Monitor won’t infringe AP’s copyright, take our word that the body of the story is written pretty much like the hook. Melodramatic and pathetic—i.e., full of pathos. In addition to facts, of course.

The tail: “‘Who can help? Who can swim? Please, help! Help! Help!’ she calls out. ‘The bridge fell! It fell! Please help! People are in the water!’”

And that’s it. The end of the RA story.

From the headline, lead, body, and tail—the whole touching story—it’s clear that people died in the gangway collapse. So why isn’t there any mention of fatalities in the story as printed in the Republican-American? Isn’t that an essential fact?

Evidently it’s not essential. Because even though you’d have expected at least some of the fatality information to have been presented towards the top of the AP story—bylined Russ Bynum and Emily Wagster Pettus and updated 7:51 PM EDT, October 21, 2024—it didn’t mention anything about the fatalities until perhaps three-quarters of the way down:

“The seven people killed were all seniors, ranging in age from 73 to 93, according to McIntosh County Coroner Melvin Amerson.”

The victims’ names were then reported, followed by several paragraphs of nonessential information.

The updated story was transmitted well before the Republican-American’s press deadline. So why was there no mention of the seven fatalities? That’s probably due to the practice of cutting from the tail end. Had whoever cut the story at the RA actually bothered to read it, he, she, they, or it would have seen the actual deaths mentioned just a couple of paragraphs after the expedient cut. Since there was a space consideration, the copy editor could have made a more thoughtful cut or two to accommodate the body count.

Copy editor? Not at the Republican-American. For quite a while, judging by the proliferation of errors (and some corrections) far more embarrassing than typos. But it’s also the fault of the AP reporters for not having put even a brief mention of fatalities in an early paragraph.

Some of the verbiage devoted to the cellphone recording of the tragedy could have been cut from the RA story to make room for at least the mention of the fatalities. And, rather than emphasizing the video capture of the accident, the headline could—should—have mentioned the fatalities, as the one on the AP website did . . .