Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their reader with unimportant
facts and statistics. Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine to write
an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. When the article arrived, the editor
read the first sentence and then refuse to publish it. The article began:'Hundreds of steps lead to
the high wall which surrounds the president's palace'. The editor at once sent the journalist a fax
instructing him find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall.
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but the took a long time to send
them Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. He sent
the journalist two more faxes, but received no reply. He sent yet another fax informing the
journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. When the journalist again failed to
reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. A week later,
the editor at last received a fax from the journalist. Not only had the poor man been arrested, but
he had been sent to prison as well. However, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he
informed the editor that the he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps leading to the
fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.