The Bus Plunge, and Remembering John Diederich

Jack Shafer has a wonderful piece up at Slate, bound to warm the hearts of any old newspaperperson, about the rise and fall of the "Bus Plunge story" in the New York Times--the little bit of filler at the bottom of the column reporting that 88 people died when a bus plunged over a cliff in Wakawakadooloo or wherever (link). Turns out the "fall," as it were, is a simple matter of technology:

Extremely short articles were a creature of the analog world, and as the digital broom swept through newspapers in the 1970s, it began whisking the whole genre out of the Times.

Apparently Shafer's story was a huge hit (link). Shafer says he heard from giddy travellers, but I bet if he checked, he would find that a lot of his correspondents were old-time copy-desk rim-persons like my friend Ivan, who sent the bus plunge story to me. Ivan waxes nostaligic about the old days at the defunct Washington Star:

...when there were no more real stories to write heds for, the slotman would feed us tons of fillers and, in the old way, we would type the hed on usually an old underwood, a one liner of course, paste the text of the filler to it, and flip it in the slotman's basket. it's about as easy a job as i've ever had. and, the paycheck wasnt bad.

The slotman could be a problem. usually it was a nervous little chubby guy who swallowed rollaids with about every gulp of coffee. he bought the giant size bottle and ate them like lifesavers. I used to put a facetious or funny head on some of the fillers. it did get monotonous. if his gut was in revolt he'd throw the hed and filler in the trash, screaming some banshee curse, and reach for the rollaids.

I continued to work the Saturday desk after i started [my new job], but when I told "rollaids" i had to be out of town the following saturday ...he said something like "if you dont come in next Saturday, dont come back." I never went back, and, of course, the Star closed up shop. I've always thought that if I had been kept on the copy desk i would have kept the paper going -- at least the sunday edition with my headlines in it.

I bet Ivan remembers John Diederich, late of the late Louisville Times and a grandmaster of the totally phoney filler. Two of Diederich's prizes (I quote from memory):

The Vermont Tourist Board reports that a tasty potation may be concocted out of the state's two principal exports, maple syrup and marble.

And:

The Yugoslav Geodetic Survey reports that it is 61 miles from Split to Dubrovnic, but onlyh 59 miles from Dubrovnic to Split.

That last one passed into Buce family lore: my daughter once sent me a postcard from Dubrovnic assuring me that it was true.

Postscript: Count on my friend John to remember the other bus plunge story?

--Terrible news, a busload of lawyers just went off the cliff!

--What's so terrible about that?

--There were two empty seats!