ALBUQUERQUE
At 9 a.m. on the very edge of the dusty, desolate collection of adobe homes and Vietnamese restaurants that seem to form this city, David Iglesias begins his run through the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. This is not easy terrain. The footing is terribly uneven. The altitude can be unbearable. At certain times one can hear the grumbling of mountain lions and the feasting of coyotes.
How many things can we find wrong with that paragraph from an article by Sridhar Pappu in The Washington Post — The Next Best Path? Would you believe anything that followed in that article?
Hat tip to John Fleck for the link.
And, with apologies to John and other reporters I respect, I am reminded of a quote I posted here three years ago today from Susan DuQuesnay Bankston:
As a general rule, I don’t like reporters. They go to meetings. I go to meetings. I come home and think about the meeting. They go home and write about the meeting. The next day when I read about the meeting in the newspaper, I wonder where I was yesterday when I thought I was at the meeting. This can be disconcerting.
There are mountain lions in the sandias… but they are rarely seen. There was an article back in 2004 about a mountain lion at Sandia National Labs. But I know people who have lived in mountain lion country their entire lives and have only seen paw-prints, never seen or heard a mountain lion.
So for a visiting reporter to hear one “grumbling” (i’d think they’d at least growl) would be truly amazing. Then again, Vietnamese restaurants!?