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Show This doesn't haDDen on regular basis A. A. the editor's column By MARC HADDOCK jjj Columnist Russell Baker, in his excellent autobiography "Growing Up," discusses the day he found he had a talent for newspaper writing. Fresh out of college, Baker was in the newsroom on rewrite assignment. assign-ment. In a daily newspaper, the rewrite man is the poor slob who has the responsibility of taking the details from a reporter on the street and turning it into a news story. The story will carry the reporter's byline, not the writer's, because in this business, it's how you get the news, not how you write it, that counts. Baker tells how he found he had two things going for him as a rewrite man - he could type very fast, and he was very good at stringing cliches together. After all, he says, that's the art of newspaper writing - string cliches together in a way people expect to read them. Baker claims that his success was built on this uncanny ability. As you might guess, not all of us are equally adept at using cliches. Believe it or not, I sometimes have a dickens of a time finding ttie right cliche for a given story. But that's the way the cookie crumbles, as they say. So last week, as I was writing All that work when right down the toilet.) Anyway, I was working my way through the first paragraph, thinking about those poor scouts working their way through park paths littered with debris from the trees and bushes that line the paths -- and I wrote this: ". . . the park has fallen into a state of disrepair that was disconcerting to many who use the park on a regular branches." Now of course, what I mean to say was, "on a regular basis," one of those cliches that makes working for a newspaper a piece of cake. But my brain thought one word, and then got intertwined with another thought about the litter, and in place of basis, I typed branches. At first I figured this is the kind of thing that makes newspaper writers cringe. If you can't get your cliches accurate, who will trust you to get anything right? I figured I could simply apologize in this week's newspaper, admit that as the editor I don't have an editor, and so mistakes slip more naturally into my copy than into others. Or even admit that it was past deadline, and I didn't take enough time to proofread the editorial. Or I could fall back on that old adage: "In this newspaper, we try to provide something for everyone. Since some people are always looking for mistakes, we try to include in-clude a few of those, too" . . . and we do it in a regular branches, if you will. Then 1 decided to be an innovator. After all, what's a cliche but a shopworn expression that a lot of people picked up on because it sounded so good the first time? Okay, so "on a regular branches" maybe doesn't sound so good even the first time, but I figure if it us used a lot, it might catch on. Someone droning on in the Utah State Legislature might pick up on it, and say it a few times. There it could pass into the mouths of us common folk. And then, at least retrospectively, my editorial won't contain an inaccuracy, but an innovation. gOf course, I have to remain impartial, so I can't overuse this new term. But anyone who would like to help is invited to join in. Look at it as an opportunity to help a living language grow - or at least mutate. If you do, I promise not to make any mistakes ever again. Or at least not to do it on a regular branches. another fine example of journalistic excellence for one of our editorial pages on the benefits of scouts cleaning up the Adventure and Learning Park, I really blew it. It was a natural mistake. Anyone could have done it. (How many of you noticed it? How many of you even read the editorial, after I worked my fingers to the bones typing it? Just as I thought. |