Slow news days sometimes lead editors to grasp for a story that … just … isn’t … there.
We’re speculating, but it seems likely that’s what happened at USA Today over the weekend, when some editor assigned a reporter to approach the Natalee Holloway story from another angle altogether.
That story is printed in today’s edition of USA Today, where we learn — brace yourself — “[I]n the end, mothers and fathers often reach the same resigned consensus [about their children taking trips]: Experience shows that danger inevitably hovers above any adventure, whether it’s a trek to a Caribbean paradise or a buzzing metropolis.”
Yes, thanks to the tragic Holloway story, USA Today hit the streets to find out if parental anxiety caused by kids-growing-up-and-leaving-home-to-do-stuff has led to any “indication that the senior trip tradition is in jeopardy.”
The answer is: no.
That would have been a good point for the editor shepherding this story to kill it in its tracks. No sudden departure from decades-old tradition equals no story.
But, nope, the story drags on to introduce us to a few parents — clearly in denial about their own childrens’ futures — that “expressed dismay that Holloway wound up alone at a bar well after midnight.”
The fact that Holloway wasn’t in Aruba to take in the rich colonial history shouldn’t be news to anyone. And if it is, it shouldn’t be news for the rest of us.
–T.L.
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.