It was a veteran of journalism who introduced me to “The Bus Stop” technique to news writing many years ago at a conference in Hartford, Conn. I never caught this wise man’s name, but he was an aging fellow who spent decades in the news business and who subsequently was now yellowing, broke and possibly dying of sheer bitterness.

Regardless of my new mentor’s decrepitude, I was so dazzled by “The Bus Stop” concept that I skipped out of the conference and spent the remainder of the day at a bar across the street from Mark Twain’s old home.*

(*Note to bosses. I would never really skip out of a conference you good people sent me to. Heck, I don’t think Mark Twain even lived in Hartford. No need to look it up.)

The bus stop technique works like this. You are a reporter standing on a sidewalk as a bus pulls away. You have news to share with a friend on the bus and only a few seconds to share it before the vehicle pulls into traffic. So you shout out something like the following as the bus pulls away:

“Three people were maimed today when an obese woman exploded at Denny’s!”

Your friend on the bus has the pertinent information and is now free to go off to the free clinic to get those shots. Had you decided to flower up your news bulletin — as most of us are tempted to do from time to time and particularly in summer months — you might have gone this route:

“While horrified diners gaped over their salubrious entrees at the new Denny’s near the corner of Blight and Decay streets this afternoon, a fat woman who had just finished her sixth helping of Moon over My Hammy exploded due to a combination of bodily gases and an ingredient used to colorize hash browns!”

Your syphilitic friend would have heard nothing at all after “salubrious entrees” and he’d have no idea what the news was at all. Plus, you’d look like a moron standing in the street and screaming five minutes after the bus pulled away.

The concept is simple: In matters of hard news, get the pertinent stuff out right away and leave matters of bodily fluids and hash browns for later paragraphs. (In the news biz, we call paragraphs simply “graphs” and we are the only people allowed to do so. We also call the first line of a story the “lede” rather than the “lead.” There’s a good story behind that — something to do with printing plates or ill-fitting dental work — but I forget what it is. Go look that up and let me know when you find out.)

I’ve been ruminating over this awesome writing exercise ever since I got a call from an off-duty cop who happened to be driving by a bank shortly after it was robbed. The officer called to describe the scene to me because it was before noon and he knew I’d still be at home in my feety pajamas. Very helpful. And his description of the action was very adept and laced with all of your favorite journalism clichés.

“Police officers and detectives are milling around in the parking lot,” he said, which is not so great from the bus stop view of things but just excellent use of the word “milling,” which news writers love.

“Yellow crime scene tape is stretched from one end of the lot to the other,” he went on, helpfully including the color of the crime scene tape for those two people left in the world who have never seen “Law & Order” or “CSI.”

It was clear immediately that this particular cop doesn’t just read news stories in his local paper, he studies them and mimics the style of its writers. Frankly, I wish more police officers would familiarize themselves with the news writing style. That might help us avoid typical police quotes such as this one:

“Law Enforcement Authorities are investigating the incident in hopes of apprehending the perpetrator after a suspect brandished a weapon while using force or the threat of force to demand Flintstone vitamins from a pharmaceutical business.”

That kind of quote leaves the reporter and all of the newspaper readers with the lingering question: What? Clearly, it would be easier for the cop to say: “We’re looking for the son-of-a-gun who robbed Rite Aid.”

Clarity and conciseness will enhance not only your news reading experience, but your personal affairs as well. If you are an aspiring author hoping to entice a literary agent, for instance, consider which of these is most likely to attract attention.

Good: “When Wilfred became old enough to properly grasp a writing implement, he endeavored to engage in exercises of literary construction and thus began a lifetime of narrative exploration.”

Better: “When Wilfred was old enough to hold a crayon, he used it to write a short story about the incident.”

But that’s enough shop talk for one day. I know you have to catch the bus and get yourself to the clinic. I would like to end by telling you a really great story about three naked women and a dancing poodle I encountered just the other day.

On a day that was granite gray and a chill wind blew out of the northeast, stirring the leaves of autumn that floated across the cool grass of the town park where red-cheeked children frolicked while their parents drank coffee and blew in their hands, a spectacle of singular peculiarity unfolded when three Rubenesque women disrobed in the spacious expanse next to a …
COLUMN TRIMMED FOR LENGTH

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer.