Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers 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 refused 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 to find out the exact
number of steps and the height of the wall.
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but he took a long time
to send them. 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 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 he had been arrested while counting the 1, 084 steps leading to the
fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.