August 14, 2005

Most newspaper article are written in the inverted pyramid format — this means that the most important information sits in the first paragraph and subsequent paragraphs clarify and elaborate that one key idea.

Not so with this article from Australia, which starts with a startling assertion (“Maria slaughtered goats”) and grows more bizarre as the story progresses. As it turns out, even before being strangled by her husband’s ex-lover, Maria’s life was so sordid and intricate it verged on the unreal: sex sites, wife-swapping, suicides, shrines to dead husbands, theft, sacrifices, clairvoyants, oh my.

I wish I could come up with sordid stories like this one — and I wish newspapers were better at conveying these fantastic details.