Dear Memetic
You ask:
“Did the journalist really have just 314 words?”
The answer is: possibly
You are correct that text written for an online publication is not in itself hindered by space constraints (as much of the verbiage hereabouts testifies), yet often in these multitasking days ‘copy’ is re-used in print and broadcast media too – especially when the employer is as big as the BBC. Hence a need to ‘keep it tight’ still applies.
In any case good journalism will always be defined in part by an ability to convey the maximum amount of information in the minimum number of words. (How am I doing?)
Also, as you probably realise, I used the example of the BBC’s online news story linked at the start of this thread partly because it was accessible, but also to illustrate a wider point about brevity…not that I’m sure it was understood by all. A better example might have been taken from a newspaper, I grant you.
Hope this adds to the great pot of understanding, and that the vast vat of deliberate, diversionary and debasing misunderstanding be drained by an equal amount.
Daniel (still in the lions’ den) Coughlan