Old-time Forum member Juanito T. Fuerte sent in this feedback by e-mail last October 25:
Hi, Joe,
Please, help! I’m getting sick and tired of reading the words “in tandem” every time newspaper reporters write news stories on people shot, ambushed, or killed by motorcycle-riding gunslingers. I know there’s another word or words they can use in place of them but, they seem happy enough to use the same words over and over without even thinking how their stories are beginning to sound (boring, of course!) to their readers.
Because I know that your column has a lot of followers (newspaper folks, included), perhaps you can discuss this in one of the issues of your Media English Watch, suggest some alternate words they can use, and hopefully, make their news stories less boring to read. (I once brought to your attention another “boring word” reporters used to beat to death—“ambush” as in “ambush interview”—and ever since, they have learned to adopt your suggested substitute words: “chance” and “unscheduled”).
Thanks, Joe, and as usual...
All the best,
Juanito T. Fuerte
My reply to Juanito:
Having covered the police beat myself as a newspaper reporter a long, long time ago, I know that it’s extremely difficult to be novel and creative in one’s choice of words when reporting crime and other acts of violence. Hard-boiled newspaper editors are often very leery of new words or phrases being used in the usual run of crime stories, and they are apt to label reporters who come up with such words as literary showoffs. So, to avoid recrimination from their editors, police beat reporters tend to settle for well-established rubberstamp phraseology in their news stories. This is how tired, old phrases like “in tandem,” “escaped on foot,” “under cover of darkness,” and “police are in hot pursuit” get enshrined in crime news reporting, rarely to be innovated upon.
Now, regarding the expression “in tandem”: I really think it’s a very neat, concise, and precise catchall phrase for criminals riding on two- or three-wheeled vehicles, which could be a motorcycle, a scooter, a tricycle, or even a bicycle (four-wheeled vehicles not included, of course!). The phrase “in tandem” means “working as a group of two or more arranged one behind the other, or acting in conjunction with one another,” so using that phrase very effectively describes two or more partners in crime aboard some kind of wheeled transport other than a four-wheeled vehicle, conspiring (not necessarily “one behind the other,” which is what “in tandem” literally means) to do somebody in and then spirit away his or her valuable possessions. I don’t think the vanilla phrase “riding together” (the only one that really comes to mind as a possible substitute) can do justice to that graphic picture, so even if “in tandem” can get to be very boring reading, perhaps we should leave that phrase well enough alone. It’s actually doing a great descriptive job for that particular type of crime done by malefactors on wheels.
