Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
a silver phrase.
A staff writer for the Rocky Mountain News covered a basketball game in which Portland beat Denver 109-94. It was “the most one-sided display of violence since Little Big Horn.” The Trail Blazers beat the Nuggets “by getting more free throws than the most accurate kid at a carnival bottle toss.”
Some of the best writing in our newspapers appears on the sports pages. Scott Fowler of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer wrote about Dan Marino. “He is the quarterback with a right arm straight from Zeus and a right leg that came straight from Achilles.” The allusions were right on target: Zeus threw thunderbolts, and Achilles suffered mortally from his vulnerable heel.
Good writing turns up in surprising places. I can’t cite the newspaper, but the item had to do with a misfortune at the Stanwood American Legion New Year’s Eve dance. “Someone took the wrong ladies coat, a three-quarter length, pie-cherry color with Christmas-gift black leather gloves in the pocket.” Dame Rebecca West, who wrote powerfully descriptive prose, couldn’t have described the coat’s color more exactly- lyThe
Chicago Sun-Times reported a burgeoning controversy when a suburban telephone company sprang new area codes on its patrons. The change “is being foisted on the towns with all the thoughtful planning of a conventioneer aiming a water balloon.”
In The Wall Street Journal two years ago, film critic Julie Salamon favorably reviewed “The Last Seduction.” She traced the flickering career of director John Dahl, whose
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