EDITORIAL SCRAPS AND NEWSPAPER SKYSCRAPERS

To astonish readers is to attract and possibly command their interest, even if for a fleeting moment. And that's why the media happily pick on superlatives and words that are designed to hype a story. This runs the risk of sometimes distorting the reality, but it seems the dividend of locking in the audience, is a valuable payoff. So editorial scraps can easily translate to newspaper skyscrapers.

In the article above, a reader is likely to be drawn in by the headline, which creates the impression that a very high-rise building is being put up.

The average person is bound to be interested by extra-ordinary things and a skyscraper adequately fits the bill of being nothing short of a visual spectacle, for many people.

The expectation is thus heightened only to be followed by a spectacular deflation.

The building in question, it soon emerges, is a mere eleven floors high!

Sure...It's a skyscraper...For Lilliputians!

THE WARTHOG, AN ABSENT MIND AND ABSENT-MINDED NEWSROOM GATEKEEPERS

Rewinding facts in a news or feature story could be done for emphasis. There's no much harm in re-stating key elements of a story, to clarify issues, especially. But it's clear some repetitions can be ridiculously pointless. It may be a sign of an absent mind or an absent-minded newsroom gatekeeper.

One look at the intro of the above article, and one gets immediately tempted to visualise a warthog, in all its forgetfulness glory.

For it has been said many a times that when a warthog is chased by a predator, it runs for dear life, but shortly after, my dear, it terrifyingly stops and starts scrounging for food, in the middle of the chase, and the predator in full charge.

I'm not saying the writer or sub-editor of that first paragraph is a warthog.

But with all due respect, their behaviour is the same. The story states on the onset that there are:

"...plans to build a 10-floor, high-end, Sh522 million residential complex in Lavington..."

So we've been told how much it would take to undertake this project.

But the warthog, so...so...sorry...I mean whoever was crafting that lead, found it important after less than ten words, to remind us that the initiative will be:

"...at a cost of Sh522 million."

To make your point, you don't always have to go the whole hog!