The News & Record's new life boat

GREENSOBO, NC -- It was probably a week or two ago when we first noticed. No one seems sure.

Snuck up on us.

This new newspaper writer. This Mike Kernels.

You can almost see the wheels turning as he tries to keep style elevated. Above substance.

Call it compact. Call it forced casual. Surely a result of clueless management: trying to push through. Still employed. To retirement. Desperate: How about something for the tweeters?

Short. Insipid. Endless.

Tweet.

Bonus: extra column inches!

^5

No complexity. No controversy. No commas. Shallow is good. Lots of it. A halcyon hop across a placid pond. From two-dimensional lily pad to lily pad. One might say were metaphors allowed. Or a thesaurus.

It cannot be easy.

Take the possibly interesting. Write fifteen hundred words. At a second grade level. Keep it mundane. Make it sound worthwhile but avoid the controversial. No matter how much the story begs for it. Conceal the news hook but make it sound interesting. Hard. Harder than you think. This paragraph. Too long. Too revealing. Makes the point.

@You: Bet you cannot do it.

He's right. Right as rain. If rain were ever right.

I can't.

I am barely at two hundred words and ready.

For a nap.

Or a lobotomy.

Can I get a press pass?