Harlequin Times

So it's not like they're reporting on foreign policy or the presidential race, but this AJC story today about a dog who saves a man's life reads more like a Harlequin romance novel than a news article.

Among the many journalistic offenses are the lack of quoted sources corroborating the telling of events, the forced use of inaccurate adjectives, the unnecessary building of drama through use of excessively short sentences and paragraphs and the lack of a date telling when this actually happened.

Here are some delightful excerpts:

"...but Charley kept pacing back and forth, back and forth. Barking. Frances Gippert had never seen her canine friend like this. His bark reminded her of a baby's distressed cry."

"Gippert spotted a man lying among the shrubs, back against the hot ground, semiconscious." You sure the ground was hot? Were you there? Usually ground next to shrubs is grassy and cool.

(offset as its own paragraph) "Tell him I love him, Bill told her. Tell him to hang on."

"By then, she could hear sirens in the distance. Help was on the way."

Maybe if they covered foreign policy like this, more people would read the paper instead of skipping to the sodoku or sports page.