Kill a Cliche — Save a Reader

If you expect to write about a flood or hurricane or snow storm in the future -- most likely everybody not on a sports staff -- please give this piece in Slate a read: "The earth pukes fire and breaks apart. Its oceans dispatch tsunamis, and the heavens, oh the heavens, churn like an intestinal disorder, flinging skyscrapers of water upon the coasts. Winds and floods scrape the land clean of buildings, bridges, and people.

"Water schemes with earth to make mud, which spreads over the dead and half-dead like skanky chocolate frosting. Man-made mayhem curses us, too—shipwrecks, fires, plane crashes, derailments, pileups, and cave-ins.

"To these scenes comes the journalist—if he hasn't already staked out the territory. With pen, camera, or microphone in hand, he struggles briefly against cliché to document the suffering and mop-up but always surrenders because the disaster-news template defies renovation. Audiences know what they want from the disaster-news genre—a blink of horror before the sports scores and then maybe a longer gaze later—and the press gives it to them."