Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The dramatic opening

Staff reporter Brandy Brubaker occasionally drives me to distraction with her writing style and today is a perfect example.

Headline: Downtown club loses license

"The liquor license of a downtown
nightclub has been suspended
during an investigation into the
alleged serving of alcohol to underage
patrons and an alleged sexual
assault involving a patron.

State Alcohol Beverage Control
Administration (ABCA) officials
suspended the liquor license held
by Tabu, on Chestnut Street, until
further notice, ABCA Spokesman
Gig Robinson said Monday."

Why, oh why, oh why are we forced to wait until halfway through the second paragraph to discover the name of the club?

There are only three possible reasons for this silly device:

1) It's part of AP style. To hell with AP style. AP style is boring, stilted and verbose for the sake of verbosity.
2) Purely to fill column inches i.e. 250 words of fact stretched to 500 words of prose
3) Ms Brubaker, her editor and/or others believe it adds drama, tension, suspense, etc.

I'm partial to UK newspapers for their terse, direct style. They would have identified Tabu in the first paragraph, perhaps the first sentence.

In fact, the second paragraph should be the first paragraph. In fact, the first paragraph should be struck entirely except for the mention of underage patrons and an alleged sexual assault - items which could have been incorporated into the second paragraph.

Maddening.