Scoop du jour: Experts agree the percentages are in my favor

George Le Masurier

Scoop du jour

I've been busy this week. Very, very, very busy. Extremely busy, in fact. Why have I been so busy this week, you may be asking yourself? I’ll tell you why. I’ve been busy this week writing my annual Labor Day filler column.

Experts say about 87.9 percent of newspaper columns published the week before and after Labor Day are pointless. Highly-paid columnists such as Thomas Friedman and myself will thrash these columns out quickly, often without stopping to include actual facts, simply to further extend an already long weekend and to avoid doing any work on Labor Day.

I recently moderated a discussion on the dangers of this growing phenomenon at the recent convention of the International Society of Highly-Paid Newspaper Columnists. Here’s an actual transcript of that riveting question and answer session.

What is the purpose of these pointless columns?

Generally speaking, the point of pointless columns — is that an oxymoron? — is to fill the space at the bottom of the op-ed page. This enables the lazy writer to spend more time in his hammock and avoiding actual work.

How do columnists stretch a simple-minded topic into a full-length column?

This is where the true professional writer separates himself from ordinary newspaper columnists. About 60 percent of filler columns use statistics to fill an additional 30 percent more space, statistician Marge Innovera said. About half of that space is filled with numbers, such as one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine.

“It’s plain shameful,” Innovera said.

They quite often will not use symbols, such as “%,” which take up less space than the word “percent.” I must admit, however, that 38.428 percent of statisticians disagree with that statistic, giving it a minus-5 percent probability of being true. The other 61.572 percent say it doesn’t matter, because they don’t believe half of what’s written in Labor Day columns anyway.

What space-filling techniques do the other 40 percent use?

I’m glad you asked that question, which, if I may paraphrase, asks how do the other slothful writers fill their assigned space and still get to the beach before people with real jobs?

Most of them will use many, many, many, many unnecessary words. They’ll just type a word like “many” over and over and over again until they reach the required word count.

I, myself, would never, never, never, ever employ such a childish trick to fill space.

How can I spot a pointless filler column?

Look for the telltale sign of repetition. More than 95 percent of pointless Labor Day columns will repeat a fact or a quote, hoping that readers, themselves anxious to get home for the long weekend, won’t notice they’ve already read it.

I, myself, would never, never, never, ever employ such a childish trick to fill space.

“It’s plain shameful,” Innovera said.

You should also look for the inclusion of facts that seem related to Labor Day but really make no sense.

Are you writing a pointless filler column right now?

I would never stoop to writing a pointless filler column because I have a very, very, very high respect for the craft, just as Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, has for Labor Day.