I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that stories covering Pasco in the St. Pete Times tend to be poorly written. I mean, how do you screw up an awesome story about a dude backing a trash truck over his co-worker? Come on, that’s Pulitzer shit right there, don’t blow it Thomas Lake. Fortunately I used to be a very expensive consultant for journalists and I will, on this rare occasion, provide free advice for Mr. Lake.

There is little agreement, except for this: One man shouldn’t have been driving, and another man was crushed.

Um, no. We haven’t even gotten to the lede proper and you already screwed up. The most interesting way to state the facts was “another man was crushed”? Shit. I hope your lede itself is better.

Walter Lee Jones was crushed to death on a bed of asphalt, minutes into his shift, by the churning wheels of a garbage truck.

Hmm. Churning is good. A bed of asphalt is not. I would have gone with something like “Under a starless sky, in the vast expanse that is Pasco County, fate spun her tangled web of fortune and this time, she spun it for Walter Lee Jones.” Damn straight.

Here are some other nuggets I particularly enjoyed:

His body was badly mangled in the accident.

He liked to eat mangoes and watch Court TV and play a card game called spades.

This is the story of how one man fell under a garbage truck after another man fell through the cracks.

These are all extremely fine examples of that deathly boring cousin of true journalism known as “fucking crappy journalism.” At least the story ended strong, or rather it did the exact opposite and I’m saying the opposite in order to try to be funny guy. Hell, even I’m confused now. Make with the quote:

Moments after the accident, Dellaquila looked a bystander named Michael Donehoo in the eye and said this: “I’ll never drive a garbage truck again.”