Word choice so bad, it has to be a joke ... right?

From an AP folo on the Wal-Mart trampling death yesterday.

I mean ... really?

 

I don't get it.

 

Not so much a joke, but a poor attempt at a clever lede. And stories about deaths don't usually need clever ledes anyway, even if it is a folo.

 

It wasn't a lead. It was buried about 12 or 13 grafs deep.

And I really didn't think it was a joke. Just that that was the only conceivable explanation for writing something so senselessly stupid.

 

Wasn't that line in the "preview" story about Black Friday? Or did they include it in the ones about the death, too?

If so then someone should have reworded it.

 

I dunno if it was in the preview, but it was definitely in the day-after trampling story.

 

Can we get some context in which this line was written?

 

Yeah, I'm really missing the point, too. Standing by itself, I don't see the problem.

 

I thought I'd explained it, but OK. It was a follow-up story about the Wal-Mart trampling death. This was a paragraph included to explain what Black Friday is.

 

And what is the bad choice of words? "a throng of shoppers pushes"?

 

Awk.

 

I don't have a problem with that as written. If someone wants to try and convince me it's the worst thing that ever happened to journalism, I'm willing to listen.