Stock Stories

I rather liked this piece about The Rise and Fall of the "Bus Plunge" Story. The Birmingham Mail used to do a lot of these 'stock' stories designed to fill a slow news day, particularly in the run up to Christmas. "Police warn shoppers of IRA Xmas bomb plot" used to be dragged out every year in December. I presume we will get a warning sometime over the next month of a "Islamist bomb plot" in the run up to the festive season. It seems strange that we never seem to see this sort of story immediately before an actual bomb explodes. Then a few days before Xmas the "Shops enjoy Xmas shopping boom" only to be followed in mid January by a stock story quoting the Chamber of Commerce griping about the worst Xmas for shopping (since the previous year's worst shopping figures, presumably). Anyway, I'm going to scan the papers for a few bus plunge stories.