Charles Apple

We’ve come up with an idea on how to save the Philadelphia newspapers from bankruptcy.

Set a jar on the editor’s desk. Any time a reporter or editor uses a pun in a story or headline, have them drop a dollar in the jar.

If this story in Tuesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer about a man who attempted to steal 91 lobsters from an Atlantic City casino eatery is any indication, the papers will be pulling a profit in no time.

The lede, by the Inky’s Peter Mucha:

No doubt the casino was steamed.

Mucha buckles down for eight sentences of straight newswriting. But then he succumbs to the dark side:

Soon the suspect found himself trapped, along with the young lobsters, and, as security guards tailing him muscled in to make the pinch, the man knew he was in hot water.

They’d quickly cracked the case.

Three more nut sentences and then a flourish to close:

The lobsters were worth an about $1,200, and that’s a lot of clams.

No word if Jones tried to butter up the judge.

Bally’s, by the way, is near the ocean, not the old bay.

Don’t get that last sentence? The restaurant robbed was at Bally’s casino, on the beachfront in Atlantic City. And “old bay” is a reference to a famous seafood seasoning:

Amusing, yes. But a hell of a stretch.

Hey, we love puns. But we think the reporter went overboard here.

As you might expect, though, many readers loved it.

Raiderfan commented:

Way to make the best of an article that you probably didn’t want to write! This was very good.

dp_absecon wrote:

Loved the story - sent it out to friends under the headline “How to Write a Newspaper Story”. Keep up the good work!

Professor Smart E. Pants wrote:

Boy, I bet he was real crabby when he got busted.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Amusing stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.