In his early days as a news reporter, James Thurber’s editor told him to “write dramatic, buttonholing leads to your stories.”

So, typing up a murder case, Thurber wrote:

“Dead. That’s what the man was when they found him with a knife in his back at 4 p.m. in front of Riley’s Saloon at the corner of 52nd and 12th Streets.”

The same thing can happen at the end of a news career.