One of the things often used in news stories posted on the internet is a descriptor of some sort of the writer of the piece. Presumably this provides the reader with some sort of metric by which to assess the credibility and reliability of the person. Last week The Washington Post ran an article with the headline (and know that reporters don’t write headlines, editors do):
“Paul McCartney’s bass guitar was missing for 51 years. Fans helped find it.”
And at the footer of the piece was the capsule bio of the writer:
“Victoria Bisset is a breaking-news reporter for The Washington Post’s London Hub, covering the most urgent and consequential stories as they unfold on the European day.”
This is a crime committed some time ago (“the bass guitar had been lost since it was stolen in 1972 without a trace,” she writes). According to the Lost Bass project website, which had undertaken the search for the missing 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass, “it had been stolen from the back of a 3 ton van during the night of 10th October 1972, in the Notting Hill area of London.”
So through crowdsourcing and publicity, especially during late September 2023, “someone living in a terraced house in Hastings on the south coast of England contacted Paul McCartney’s company and then returned the bass to them.”
A statement posted on McCartney’s site on February 14 (should we read some Valentine’s Day into the timing?) reads, in part, “The guitar has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved.”