Perhaps you were in your office’s communal kitchen getting a second or third cup of coffee this morning when you saw the office’s communal copy of the Dallas Morning News. You take a gander at the frontpage and see what’s worth reading. There, at the bottom, is a story from Oak Cliff tagged Home Invasion. The headline: “Intruder wasn’t a cat burglar, but culprit did wear a mask.” Enticing. Criminals do the darnedest things. You read the lede. Writer Steve Thompson does some nice work, drawing you in. Nice touch there, including the bit about the 85-year-old home invasionee “using the tip of his cane to switch on a light and show the destruction.” You get to the jump and follow it.
Then, a full 10 paragraphs in, you finally discover who–or what–the culprit was: a raccoon. The online version gives it away with the headline: “Raccoon ‘burglar’ evades Dallas police, wreaks havoc in Kessler Park home.” But print readers may feel, I don’t know, duped. And then maybe confused about why such a story was frontpage-worthy. And then you’re resigned to the fact that the story did what it was supposed to do. The ol’ editorial misdirection/bait ‘n switch. You fell for it. Well-played, DMN editors. Well-played.
