Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

A: President Lincoln was scheduled to attend the theater this evening.

Or B: After another arduous day holding a fractious nation together over the issues of slavery and secession and impatient with the slow fingers of telegraphers transmitting last week's battlefield reports, a lanky President Lincoln leaned back at his government-issue desk and told aides, "Get my tallest hat. I feel like a play tonight."

Want Filigree With Those Facts?
March 27, 2005

The Associated Press, the chief wire service news source for American newspapers and broadcasters, has decided to distribute two versions of major breaking news stories: one a traditional, straightforward, factual news lead and the other a more evocative, literary version using images, vivid description, quotes and narrative techniques intended to engage busy readers.

ALT LEDE: On a sunny, wind-swept late winter day underscoring the diverse weather systems spanning a nation as large as the United States, the good old Associated Press, a vast publishing consortium that has fed Americans their news for 156 years, is enhancing the story diet it feeds newspapers challenged by instant broadcast and Internet competition.

To promote better cardio-financial health in the newspapers' circulation systems, the venerable wire service will now squeeze two versions of every big story from its hard-pressed staff:

One, a familiar nuts-and-bolts tale that most readers will have digested several times long before the newspaper's delivery, and the other a more flowing, even quirky, version that's more fun to chew on and could bring useful perspective absent from the cable TV crawl.

What if this version A and version B were applied retrospectively? Very retrospectively.