Bus plunge story is an idiom referencing a journalistic practice of reporting bus accidents in short articles that describe the vehicle as "plunging" from a bridge or hillside road.[1][2][3] The phenomenon has been noted in The New York Times, which published many bus plunge stories from the 1950s through the 1980s, running about 20 such articles in 1968 alone.[4]
Commentators on the "bus plunge" phenomenon have suggested that such reports were printed not because they were considered particularly newsworthy, but because they could be reduced to a few lines and used to fill gaps in the page layout. Further, the words "bus" and "plunge" are short, and can be used in one-column headlines within the narrow, eight-column format that was prevalent in newspapers through the first half of the 20th century.[4][3] Columnist John McIntyre has called the reports "phatic journalism" that pretends to inform the reader about world events without any significant news gathering.[5] The development of computerized layout tools in the 1970s eventually reduced the need for such filler stories, but newswires continue to carry them.[4][3]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Miracle escape in bus plunge". Thisislocallondon.co.uk. January 3, 2001. Archived from the original on January 2, 2014. Retrieved January 2, 2014.
- ^ "Collection of Bus Plunge articles". Users.lmi.net. Archived from the original on January 1, 2014. Retrieved January 2, 2014.
- ^ a b c George, Patrick (October 7, 2012). "Why Buses Always Plunge But Never Fall, Drop, Descend Or Plummet". Jalopnik. G/O Media. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
- ^ a b c Shafer, Jack (November 13, 2006). "The rise and fall of the "bus plunge" story". Slate Magazine. Slate.com. Archived from the original on November 9, 2012. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
- ^ McIntyre, John (November 11, 2015). "It looks just like news". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved June 18, 2023.