
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993                   TAG: 9401040002
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEAVING THE PROSE TO THE YOUNG PROS

There is one thing a semi-retired, semi-hysterical reporter can be especially grateful for at this time of the year.

He can go into the office without fear of having to write a weather story.

When I was a young, semi-hysterical reporter, I rather liked to write weather stories - especially weather stories with snow in them.

It gave me a chance to write like Thomas Wolfe, which couldn't be done, for example, if you were covering a murder trial.

Without the slightest evidence of embarrassment of any kind, I have written lead paragraphs like the following:

``A sudden snowstorm, belying the weather forecasters, slipped into the Roanoke Valley on Friday night, spilling down the mountains and making its statement in a white portrait that spoke of winter's purity.''

Or:

``Old Man Winter harried the Roanoke Valley again Thursday with a snowstorm that wrote its own poetry in the snow and left behind sculptures in white.''

No kidding. Editors in those day were so harried they wrote a head and sent the copy back to the composing room. They didn't have time to get sick about writing like that.

But something happened, and I began to detest weather stories. All the poetry had gone out of me, and I once wrote the following highly analytical sentence about a snowstorm:

``State police said that some of the roads were slippery while others were not.''

I can now admit I stole this idea from another reporter who had earlier written in a weather story:

``Some of the stores were closed while others remained open.''

My sudden dislike for weather stories actually helped me as a writer. It has been 30 years since I used the word ``belying'' or the phrase ``winter's purity.''

I became so cynical I devised the instant weather story for young reporters:

``A winter storm that (a) slipped across the mountains, (b) surprised the forecasters or (c) blew in suddenly from the west descended in the Roanoke Valley on Wednesday.

``State police said roads were (a) slippery, (b) not slippery, (c) blocked or (d) none of the above.''

As for this new generation of weather-story writers, all I have to say is let it snow, baby.

by CNB