Writing Tools

Dear Dr. Ink:

For three years, you were the coolest thing on the Poynter Web site. You were so cool that you made Romenesko look like…well, Romenesko. The archive of your more than 300 columns is a treasure trove worth exploring again and again.

As your biggest fan, Doc, I'm honored that you've agreed to climb out of the basement once in a while for a cameo appearance on the Writing Tools blog.

So here is my question: I am puzzled by page 6A of Poynter's St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times for Saturday, July 22. It contains national and international news of some import. The big headlines include:

Officials accused of fraud in Iraq

Germany: Iran letter attacks Israelis

Teen abortion debate returns to Senate

Then in the middle of the page, with the cutest photo (by AP photographer Julie Jacobson), is the story of a 1-year-old cat named Willy who likes to steal gardening gloves from his neighbors in Pelham, N.Y. Doesn't the presence of this playful animal story (by AP reporter Jim Fitzgerald) threaten to undercut the seriousness of the straight news pieces?

Your alter in ego,

Roy Peter Clark

Dr. Ink

Dear Alt:

Dr. Ink is not sure you realize the significance of this, his first apparition on your Writing Tools blog.  With surprising magnanimity, the good doctor offers congratulations on the publication of your book. He offers this praise even though the wise doctor realizes that you consigned him to the basement because you feared that Doc was becoming a better writer than you. But then, Dr. Ink looks down on any scribe who fails to refer to himself in the third person.

Now for that cat.

The editors at the Times were crafty to drop him into the middle of a page that otherwise suffered from omnivorous solemnity. Dr. Ink liked the headline:

Behind the purr, a bandit's heart

He liked the photo caption:

Willy's owners place the pilfered gloves on a clothesline strung across the front fence of their home in Pelham, N.Y., so the rightful owners can claim them. "I guess it's better than if he was bring home dead birds." Jennifer Pifer said.

And he liked the lead:

A pink and white gardening glove was missing from Jeannine Goche's front porch.  But there was absolutely no mystery about who had taken it.

Willy, the cat who loves gloves, had struck again.

"It has to be him," Goche said. "I've heard about him."

Dr. Ink  appreciates some of the writer's other moves. We get the name of the kitty, Willy [see Tool #14], which certainly must please you; we get a bit of word-play with "loves" and "gloves." [See Tool #13.] And we get a good quote from a character who turns out to a victim of the furry rascal. No word is wasted, except for the adverb "absolutely." [See Tool #5.]

AP Willy the Cat

The Doc LOL'd at the image of the notorious pussycat accompanying the mailman "up and down the block, all the way to each front door." How anti-dog can a creature get? Doc wonders.

Given such whimsy, no wonder that a reader would prefer Willy's yarn to yet another dismal report out the Middle East. Dr. Ink bets readers could go back a decade, or even three decades, to stories about war in the Middle East, that would seem almost identical to the ones in the paper today.

Yet there is only one Willy the Cat, and we should be grateful that he provided us with a momentary distraction from the day's dark shadows.

And we can be grateful that the reporter did not fall back on "cat burglar" or "cat-astrophe" or some other expression of what you condemn as "first-level creativity."

Somewhere above you,

Dr. Ink