Thursday, September 8, 2005 Ye Olde XXX News, Goddammit

A couple indignant e-mailers today griped that we carried an AP news story out of New Orleans in which an evacuee was quoted saying, "That's what so devastating, that goddamned levee breaking."

Two million people displaced or killed. Two million futures disrupted. Putrefying corpses floating in the streets like free-swimming day at the Styx. A modern city reduced to an uninhabitable, poisonous swamp. American confidence in its government's protective capability shaken. Our own oil security crimped while the oil-terrorists howl at our back door. An unprecedented recovery and cleanup that could exceed the GNP of most nations on Earth. A potential public health crisis looming ... and these folks worry about the Lord's name being taken in vain?

Face it, if God were reading the paper, we might have at least been spared from listening to Kanye West.

But the most interesting caller today wanted to know the origins of "-30-" ... a traditional symbol appearing at the end of hard-copy news stories in the "old" days (you know, back when we used typewriters.) For once, I actually knew! It derived from the days when out-of-town stories were literally transmitted by telegraph wire (thus, we still call them "wire services.") The telegrapher separated each item with a simple "XXX." And if you paid attention in Latin class or watched the Super Bowl 10 years ago, it looks a lot like the Roman numeral for 30. Over the years, under the green eyeshades of yore, "XXX" simply evolved to "-30-"

And as you can imagine, more than one old-time newspaperman's obit ended that way.

posting from http://underthenews.blogspot.com/