There are many pressures in reporting a breaking news story—getting the facts and getting them out before the next guy perhaps paramount among them. But The Scrapbook thinks that those pressures notwithstanding, a fine publication such as the New York Times could find time to avoid the hoariest of clichés, especially when the cliché in question misreports the facts.

The cliché we’re talking about appeared in the Times‘s main story about the gunman who attacked baseball-playing Republicans last week, “Steve Scalise Among 5 Shot at Baseball Field; Suspect Is Dead.” Here’s how the paper describes the wounding of the House majority whip: “Standing at second base, Mr. Scalise was struck in the hip, according to witnesses, and collapsed as the shots rang out.” Shots rang out. It is one of those trite, lazy expressions that one expects (and gets) from local TV news reporters winging it at the scene. But one expects better of the Times, even when they are racing to get a story up online. What one doesn’t expect is for the Times to use the same pulpism twice in one article, but that’s just what the paper does: Later in its story the Times reports it was 7:09 a.m. “when the first shots rang out.”