Church of Twain: ‘Making’ the news

On occasion I’ve been accused of pumping up aspects of a news story. Critical readers can’t decide whether it’s out of a sense of crass sensationalism or a lack of brainpower that I focus on an element of a story often to the exclusion of other details. So be it.

As long as you’re reading my work and getting something out of it, I’m doing my job.

Back in the Virginia City of Territorial Enterprise reporter Mark Twain’s time, news occasionally failed to come knocking. Virginia City was a lively place, but sensational news was sometimes scarce.

On slow days Twain and his mentor Dan DeQuille would concoct their own news stories and sometimes neglect to inform the reader of the fact.

In a letter in 1868 Twain would recall, "To find a petrified man, or break a stranger's leg, or cave an imaginary mine, or discover some dead Indians in a Gold Hill tunnel, or massacre a family at Dutch Nick's, were feats and calamities that we never hesitated about devising when the public needed matters of thrilling interest for breakfast. The seemingly tranquil ENTERPRISE office was a ghastly factory of slaughter, mutilation and general destruction in those days."

In my journalistic defense, I have never killed a man who wasn’t already dead.

Come to think of it, that’s not entirely true.

I once buried Ben Hogan in a bunker not even he could climb out of. Back when I was a sports writer, I was typing away on deadline for a column on the subject of golf and wrote “the late Ben Hogan.” Trouble was, he wasn’t “late” yet. I corrected the mistake, but was eventually proved right.